Democracy, revolution, and monarchism in early American literature

Resource Information

The work Democracy, revolution, and monarchism in early American literature represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in European University Institute Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Democracy, revolution, and monarchism in early American literature

Statement of responsibility

Paul Downes

Title variation

Democracy, Revolution, & Monarchism in Early American Literature

Creator

• Downes, Paul, 1965-

Subject

• Democracy in literature
• Monarchy in literature
• Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 18th century
• Revolutionary literature, American -- History and criticism
• Revolutions in literature
• United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Literature and the revolution
• United States -- Intellectual life -- 18th century
• American literature -- Revolutionary period, 1775-1783 -- History and criticism

Language

eng

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, 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.--

Member of

• Cambridge studies in American literature and culture, 130

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

UkCbUP

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Series statement

• Cambridge studies in American literature and culture
• Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

Series volume

130