Sensibility and the American Revolution / Sarah Knott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Knott, Sarah, 1972-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Community life.

History.

Social interaction.

Self-perception.

Sensitivity (Personality trait).

Social aspects.

Manners and customs.

United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Social aspects.

United States.

United States--Social life and customs--1775-1865.

Sensitivity (Personality trait)--Social aspects--United States--History--18th century.

Sensitivity (Personality trait)--Political aspects--United States--History--18th century.

Self-perception--United States--History--18th century.

Social interaction--United States--History--18th century.

Community life--United States--History--18th century.

Political culture--United States--History--18th century.

Political culture.

United States--Politics and government--1775-1783.

Politics and government.

United States--Politics and government--1783-1809.

Physical Description:

ix, 338 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, [2009]

Summary:

In the Wake of American independence, it was clear that the new United States required novel political forms. Less obvious but no less revolutionary was the idea that the American people needed a new understanding of the self. Sensibility was a cultural movement that celebrated the human capacity for sympathy and sensitivity to the world. For individuals, it offered a means of self-transformation. For a nation lacking a monarch, state religion, or standing army, sensibility provided a means of cohesion. National independence and social interdependence facilitated one another. What Sarah Knott calls "the sentimental project" helped a new kind of citizen create a new kind of government.

Knott paints sensibility as a political project whose fortunes rose and fell with the broader tides of the Revolutionary Atlantic world. Moving beyond traditional accounts of social unrest, republican and liberal ideology, and the rise of the autonomous individual, she offers an original interpretation of the American Revolution as a transformation of self and society.

Contents:

Part I Transatlantic Conduits 23

Chapter 1 Print, Booksellers, and the Sentimental 27

Chapter 2 Medicine, Physicians, and the Nervous 69

Part II American Circles 105

Chapter 3 Sentimental Coteries: A Quartet of Types 109

Chapter 4 The War for Independence 153

Chapter 5 Shaping the New Republic 195

Part III Transatlantic Backlash 265

Chapter 6 Wars of Words: Radicalism, Youth, and Reaction 269.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780807831984

0807831980

9780807859186

0807859184

OCLC:

226911639