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Record Nr.

UNINA9910818987403321

Autore

Tamarkin Elisa

Titolo

Anglophilia : deference, devotion, and antebellum America / / Elisa Tamarkin

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2008

ISBN

1-281-96662-2

9786611966621

0-226-78943-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (435 p.)

Disciplina

973.3

Soggetti

Public opinion - United States - History - 19th century

Popular culture - United States - History - 19th century

Democracy - Social aspects - United States - History - 19th century

Political culture - United States - History - 19th century

United States Civilization 1783-1865

United States Civilization British influences

United States History Revolution, 1775-1783 Influence

United States Relations Great Britain

Great Britain Relations United States

Great Britain Foreign public opinion, American

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [325]-381) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Chapter One. Monarch-Love; or, How the Prince of Wales Saved the Union -- Chapter Two. Imperial Nostalgia -- Chapter Three. Freedom and Deference -- Chapter Four. The Anglophile Academy -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Anglophilia charts the phenomenon of the love of Britain that emerged after the Revolution and remains in the character of U.S. society and class, the style of academic life, and the idea of American intellectualism. But as Tamarkin shows, this Anglophilia was more than just an elite nostalgia; it was popular devotion that made reverence for British tradition instrumental to the psychological innovations of



democracy. Anglophilia spoke to fantasies of cultural belonging, polite sociability, and, finally, deference itself as an affective practice within egalitarian politics. Tamarkin traces the wide-ranging effects of anglophilia on American literature, art and intellectual life in the early nineteenth century, as well as its influence in arguments against slavery, in the politics of Union, and in the dialectics of liberty and loyalty before the civil war. By working beyond narratives of British influence, Tamarkin highlights a more intricate culture of American response, one that included Whig elites, college students, radical democrats, urban immigrants, and African Americans. Ultimately, Anglophila argues that that the love of Britain was not simply a fetish or form of shame-a release from the burdens of American culture-but an anachronistic structure of attachement in which U.S. Identity was lived in other languages of national expression.