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BestsellerE-book
Author Downes, Paul, 1965-

Title Democracy, revolution, and monarchism in early American literature / Paul Downes.

Publication Info. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xii, 239 pages).
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture ; no. 130
Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; no. 130.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-236) and index.
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.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject American Revolution (United States : 1775-1783)
Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 18th century.
Politics and literature.
United States.
History.
Chronological Term 18th century
Subject Revolutionary literature, American -- History and criticism.
Revolutionary literature, American.
United States -- Intellectual life -- 18th century.
Intellectual life.
Revolutions in literature.
Revolutions in literature.
Democracy in literature.
Democracy in literature.
Monarchy in literature.
Monarchy in literature.
Chronological Term Geschichte 1770-1830
1700 - 1799
Indexed Term Electronic books
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.
Online-Publikation.
Other Form: Print version: Downes, Paul, 1965- Democracy, revolution, and monarchism in early American literature. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2002 0521813395 (DLC) 2002017399 (OCoLC)48803428
ISBN 0511020554 (electronic book)
9780511020551 (electronic book)
0511120435 (electronic book)
9780511120435 (electronic book)
9780521813396 (hardback)
0521813395 (hardback)
9780511485480 (ebook)
0511485484 (ebook)
1280159634
9781280159633