Revolutionary Histories: Transatlantic Cultural Nationalism 1775-1815 (Romanticism in Perspective)

In this collection of interdisciplinary essays, historians and literary critics from both sides of the Atlantic analyse some of the most significant watersheds and faultlines that occurred in the period 1775-1815, a crucial era in the history of Euro-Americans relations. Tracing complex patterns of intellectual and cultural cross-pollination between the Old and the New World, between pre-and post-Revolutionary cultures, the essays aim to increase out awareness of the degree to which the emergence of cultural nationalism in this period was essentially a transatlantic process - a process that was itself part of a larger circumatlantic cultural continuum. Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-9 Traveling Through Revolutions: Chastellux, Barlow, and Transatlantic Political Cultures, 1776–1812....Pages 10-25 Volney, Frankenstein, and the Lessons of History....Pages 26-47 Benjamin Franklin, Native Americans, and the Commerce of Civility....Pages 48-61 A Language for the Nation: A Transatlantic Problematic....Pages 62-84 International Embarrassment: A Transatlantic Morphology of Blushing, 1749–1812....Pages 85-103 Captivity and Cultural Capital in the English Novel....Pages 104-121 Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Nursery Tales on the Frontier....Pages 122-134 “That Miserable Continent”: Cultural Pessimism and the Idea of “America” in Cornelis de Pauw....Pages 135-151 The Illusion of the Illuminati: the Counterconspiratorial Origins of Post-Revolutionary Conservatism....Pages 152-165 “I will use no daggers! I will unfold a tale — !”: Historical Sensitivity and Generic Contiguity in the Narrative Theories of William Godwin....Pages 166-187 Edmund Burke, Historism, and History....Pages 188-211 Back Matter....Pages 212-258 Although many books have studied writers and alcohol in modern American literature, the rich culture of drinking and the many poems and narratives about it in the Romantic period in England have been entirely neglected. Bacchus in Romantic England: Writers and Drink 1780-1830 is the first study to describe the bulk and variety of writings about drinking to set these poems, novels, essays, letters and journals in a historical, sociological, and medical context to demonstrate the importance of drunkenness in the works of a number of major and minor writers of the period and to suggest that during these years, for a short time, the pleasures and pains of drinking are held in a vivacious balance. The book argues that the figure of the drinker tests the margins of the human being, either as a beast, savage, or thing or, on the other edge of the human range, as a free, inspired spirit Introduction / W.m. Verhoeven -- 1. Traveling Through Revolutions: Chastellux, Barlow, And Transatlantic Political Cultures, 1776-1812 / Lloyd Kramer -- 2. Volney, Frankenstein, And The Lessons Of History / Wessel Krul -- 3. Benjamin Franklin, Native Americans, And The Commerce Of Civility / Carla Mulford -- 4. A Language For The Nation: A Transatlantic Problematic / Leonard Tennenhouse -- 5. International Embarrassment: A Transatlantic Morphology Of Blushing, 1749-1812 / Robert Lawson-peebles -- 6. Captivity And Cultural Capital In The English Novel / Nancy Armstrong -- 7. Real Toads In Imaginary Gardens: Nursery Tales On The Frontier / Marilyn Gaull. Edited By W.m. Verhoeven. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 212-254) And Index. "This book focuses on some of the greatest writers and artists of European Romanticism, including S. T. Coleridge, Wordsworth, J. M. W. Turner, Goethe, Holderlin and, in the later nineteenth century, Matthew Arnold. Concluding with a discussion of the significance of Romanticism for our understanding of postmodernity, its various chapters explore the place of the biblical canon as the central element in the shift from the sacred to the secular, and the place of the Bible in the development of our concept of Weltliteratur, or world literature, as definitive of culture. This book will be of interest to all concerned with art, literature and the development of biblical criticism and religious thought."--BOOK JACKET The American and French Revolutions at the end of the eighteenth century stimulated the development of an optimistic, liberal, trans-atlantic political culture that united the advocates of both revolutions.