Democracy, revolution, and monarchism in early American literature / Paul Downes
- Author
- Downes, Paul, 1965-
- Published
- Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2002.
- Physical Description
- 1 online resource (xii, 239 pages).
Access Online
- Series
- Contents
- 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.
- Summary
- 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, Crevecoeur's Letters From An American Farmer, and the works of America's first significant literary figures including Brockden Brown, Washington Irving and James Fennimore Cooper. He claims that the new democratic American state and 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.
- Subject(s)
- 1700-1799
- Geschichte 1770-1830
- American literature—Revolution, 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
- Politique et littérature—États-Unis—Histoire—18e siècle
- Littérature révolutionnaire américaine—Histoire et critique
- Révolutions dans la littérature
- LITERARY CRITICISM—American—General
- American literature
- Intellectual life
- Politics and literature
- Revolutionary literature, American
- Literatur
- Monarchie
- Demokratie
- Revolution
- United States—History—Revolution, 1775-1783—Literature and the revolution
- United States—Intellectual life—18th century
- États-Unis—Vie intellectuelle—18e siècle
- United States
- USA
- American Revolution (United States : 1775-1783)
- Other Subject(s)
- Genre(s)
- ISBN
- 0511020554 (electronic bk.)
9780511020551 (electronic bk.)
0511120435 (electronic bk.)
9780511120435 (electronic bk.)
9780521813396 (hbk.)
0521813395 (hbk.)
9780511485480 (ebook)
0511485484 (ebook)
1280159634
9781280159633 - Digital File Characteristics
- data file
- Bibliography Note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-236) and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 43106717