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Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Bradfield, Scott.

Title Dreaming revolution : transgression in the development of American romance / Scott Bradfield.

Publication Info. Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [1993]
©1993

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xiv, 125 pages)
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 107-122) and index.
Summary Dreaming Revolution usefully employs current critical theory to address how the European novel of class revolt was transformed into the American novel of imperial expansion. Bradfield shows that early American romantic fiction - including works by William Godwin, Charles Brockden Brown, James Fenimore Cooper, and Edgar Allan Poe - can and should be considered as part of a genre too often limited to the Nineteenth-century European novel. Beginning with Godwin's Caleb Williams, Bradfield describes the ways in which revolution legitimates itself as a means of establishing Political consensus. For European revolutionaries like Godwin or Rousseau, the tyranny of the king must be replaced by the more indisputable authority of human reason. In other words, democratic revolution makes people free to investigate the same truths and arrive at the same democratic conclusions. In the American novel, however, the Enlightenment's idealized pursuit of abstract truth becomes restructured as a pursuit of abstract space. Instead of revealing knowledge, Americans explore further territories, manifest destiny, limitless regions of the yet-to-be-colonized and the still-to-be-known. In a spirited discussion of works by Brown, Cooper and Poe, Bradfield argues that Americans take the class dynamics of the European psychological novel and apply them to the American landscape, reimagining psychological spaces as geographical ones. Class distinctions become refigured in terms of the common people's pursuit of a meaning vaster than themselves - a meaning which leads them to imagine the always expanding body of colonial America. However, since class conflict is never successfully eliminated or forgotten, the memory of class struggle always reemerges in the narrative like a half-repressed dream of politics. In Dreaming Revolution, Bradfield reveals and interprets these dreams, opening these American novels to a richer and more rewarding reading.
Contents The whole truth : Caleb Williams and the transgression of class -- The great sea-change : Edgar Huntly and the transgression of space -- James Fenimore Cooper and the return of the king -- Edgar Allan Poe and the exaltation of form.
Access Use copy Restrictions unspecified MiAaHDL
Reproduction Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL
System Details Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Processing Action digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve MiAaHDL
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851 -- Political and social views.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851.
Political and social views.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Political and social views.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849.
Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771-1810. Edgar Huntly.
Godwin, William, 1756-1836. Things as they are.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849.
Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771-1810.
Godwin, William, 1756-1836.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851 -- Pensée politique et sociale.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Pensée politique et sociale.
Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771-1810. Edgar Huntly.
Godwin, William, 1756-1836. Things as they are.
Edgar Huntly (Brown, Charles Brockden)
Things as they are (Godwin, William)
American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
American fiction.
Chronological Term 19th century
Subject Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
Politics and literature.
United States.
History.
Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
Literature and society.
Revolutionary literature, American -- History and criticism.
Revolutionary literature, American.
Political fiction, American -- History and criticism.
Political fiction, American.
American fiction -- European influences.
American fiction -- European influences.
Deviant behavior in literature.
Deviant behavior in literature.
Social conflict in literature.
Social conflict in literature.
Romanticism -- United States.
Romanticism.
Imperialism in literature.
Imperialism in literature.
Chronological Term 1800 - 1899
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.
Other Form: Print version: Bradfield, Scott. Dreaming revolution. Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, ©1993 0877453950 (DLC) 92046717 (OCoLC)27264722
ISBN 1587290324 (electronic book)
9781587290329 (electronic book)
0877453950 (acid-free paper)
9780877453956 (acid-free paper)