Democracy, Revolution, and Monarchism in Early American Literature

Description

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 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.

Paul Downes is an Associate Professor in the department of English at the University of Toronto. He is the author of a number of articles on eighteenth and nineteenth century American literature.

"...Downes's study presents a valuable new reading of American Revolutionary culture, and it stands as an example of the important work that remains to be done within the confines of American studies and the geographical boundaries of the United States." American Literature "Downe's Democracy deconstructs the traditional opposition between monarchy and democracy, thus advancing a compelling argument of how the extension of democratic rights owes much to its inheritance from monarchy. Unapologetically theoretical, Downes creates an engaging dialogue with the work of philosophers and political theorists like Derrida, Balibar, Adrendt, Laclau and Mouffe. The result is a work that provides a fresh methodological approach to the field of early American literature." English Studies in Canada,/i Pablo Ramirez, University of Guelph