1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910806894803321

Autore

Downes Paul <1965->

Titolo

Democracy, revolution, and monarchism in early American literature / / Paul Downes [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2002

ISBN

1-107-13325-4

0-521-10029-1

0-511-30508-7

0-511-14798-8

0-511-12043-5

0-511-04548-4

1-280-15963-4

0-511-48548-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 239 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; ; 130

Disciplina

810.9/358

Soggetti

American literature - Revolutionary period, 1775-1783 - History and criticism

Politics and literature - United States - History - 18th century

Revolutionary literature, American - History and criticism

Revolutions in literature

Democracy in literature

Monarchy in literature

United States History Revolution, 1775-1783 Literature and the revolution

United States Intellectual life 18th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-236) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Monarchophobia: reading the mock executions of 1776 -- Crèvecoeur's revolutionary loyalism -- Citizen subjects: the memoirs of Stephen Burroughs and Benjamin Franklin -- An epistemology of the ballot box: Brockden Brown's secrets -- Luxury, effeminacy, corruption: Irving and the gender of democracy -- Afterword: the revolution's last word.

Sommario/riassunto

Paul Downes combines literary criticism and political history in order to



explore responses to the rejection of monarchism in the American revolutionary era. Downes' analysis considers the Declaration of Independence, Franklin's autobiography, Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer and the works of America's first significant literary figures including Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. He claims that the post-revolutionary American state and the new democratic citizen inherited some of the complex features of absolute monarchy, even as they were strenuously trying to assert their difference from it. In chapters that consider the revolution's mock execution of George III, the Elizabethan notion of the 'king's two bodies' and the political significance of the secret ballot, Downes points to the traces of monarchical political structures within the practices and discourses of early American democracy. This is an ambitious study of an important theme in early American culture and society.