Hobbes, sovereignty, and early American literature / Paul Downes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Downes, Paul, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 172.

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.

American literature--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775--History and criticism.

American literature.

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

Sovereignty in literature.

Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679--Influence.

Hobbes, Thomas.

Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679. Leviathan.

Politics and literature--United States--History--18th century.

Politics and literature.

History.

United States--Intellectual life--18th century.

United States.

Intellectual life.

Leviathan (Hobbes, Thomas).

American literature--Colonial period.

American literature--Revolutionary period (United States).

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 297 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Summary:

"Hobbes, Sovereignty, and Early American Literature pursues the question of democratic sovereignty as it was anticipated, theorized and resisted in the American colonies and in the early United States. It proposes that orthodox American liberal accounts of political community need to be supplemented and challenged by the deeply controversial theory of sovereignty that was articulated in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651). This book offers a radical re-evaluation of Hobbes's political theory and demonstrates how a renewed attention to key Hobbesian ideas might inform inventive re-readings of major American literary, religious and political texts. Ranging from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puritan attempts to theorize God's sovereignty to revolutionary and founding-era debates over popular sovereignty, this book argues that democratic aspiration still has much to learn from Hobbes's Leviathan and from the powerful liberal resistance it has repeatedly provoked"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Hobbes and the golden calf

1. Sovereignty's new clothes

2. Rereading Leviathan: the "state of nature" and the "artificial soul"

3. Hobbes in America

4. "Heaven's sugar cake": Puritan sovereignty

5. Tyranny's corpse: Jonathan Mayhew's revolutionary sermon on Romans 13

6. "Imperium in imperio": founding sovereignty

7. Tar and feathers: Hawthorne's revolution

8. Hobbes, slavery, and sovereign resistance

9. Nat Turner and the African American revolution.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781107085299

1107085292

OCLC:

899880576