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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

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 Rocky Hill - Downloadable Materials  EBSCO Ebook    Downloadable
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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 125 pages)
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 star 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 pda MiAaHDL
Note Print version record.
Subject Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851 -- Political and social views.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 -- Political and social views.
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. (OCoLC)fst00036451
Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849. (OCoLC)fst00032674
Edgar Huntly (Brown, Charles Brockden) (OCoLC)fst01913246
Things as they are (Godwin, William) (OCoLC)fst01359834
American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
Revolutionary literature, American -- History and criticism.
Political fiction, American -- History and criticism.
American fiction -- European influences.
Deviant behavior in literature.
Social conflict in literature.
Romanticism -- United States.
Imperialism in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
American fiction. (OCoLC)fst00807048
American fiction -- European influences. (OCoLC)fst00807067
Deviant behavior in literature. (OCoLC)fst00891966
Imperialism in literature. (OCoLC)fst00968142
Literature and society. (OCoLC)fst01000096
Political and social views. (OCoLC)fst01353986
Political fiction, American. (OCoLC)fst01069300
Politics and literature. (OCoLC)fst01069960
Revolutionary literature, American. (OCoLC)fst01096610
Romanticism. (OCoLC)fst01100133
Social conflict in literature. (OCoLC)fst01122407
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Chronological Term 1800 - 1899
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. (OCoLC)fst01411635
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Other Form: Print version: Bradfield, Scott. Dreaming revolution. Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, ©1993 0877453950 (DLC) 92046717 (OCoLC)27264722
ISBN 1587290324 (electronic bk.)
9781587290329 (electronic bk.)
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