Literature, intertextuality, and the American Revolution : from Common Sense to "Rip Van Winkle" / Steven Blakemore.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Blakemore, Steven.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Revolutionary period, 1775-1783--History and criticism.

American literature.

Revolutionary literature, American--History and criticism.

Revolutionary literature, American.

Intertextuality.

History.

United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Literature and the revolution.

United States.

Physical Description:

xviii, 141 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Madison [N.J.] : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ; Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, [2012]

Summary:

Dealing with Thomas Fame's Common Sense (1776), John Trumbull's M'Fingal (1776-1882), Philip Freneau's "The British-Prison Ship" (1781), J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer (1782), and Washington living's "Rip Van Winkle" (1819-1820), Steven Blakemore breaks new ground in assessing the strategies of subversion and intertextuality used during the American Revolution. Blakemore also crystallizes the historical contexts that link these works together-contexts that have been missed or overlooked, by critics and scholars. These five works additionally illuminate issues of history (the Norman Conquest, the English Civil War, and the French Revolution) and gender as they impinge on American-revolutionary discourse. The result is five new readings of significant revolutionary-era works that suggest fruitful entries into other literatures of the Revolution. Blakemore demonstrates the nexus between literature and history in the revolutionary era and how it created an intertextual dialogue in the formation of the first postcolonial critiques of the British Empire. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Demystifying Metaphors: Paine's Critique of British Origins and the Language of Empire 1

2 The World Turned Upside Down: Scottish "Second-Sight" and Ironic Inversion in John Trumbull's M'Fingal 27

Postscript: Allusive Appropriation and the Emigration of Virtue in M'Fingal 45

3 Allegory, Androgyny, and Gender in Freneau's "The British Prison Ship" 51

4 Crevecoeur and the Subversion of the American Revolution 69

5 Family Resemblances: The Texts and Contexts of "Rip Van Winkle" 107.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781611475722

1611475724

9781611475739

1611475732

OCLC:

792886193