Revolutions & Watersheds : Transatlantic Dialogues, 1775-1815 / edited by W. M. Verhoeven and Beth Dolan Kautz.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Verhoeven, W. M., editor.

Dolan, Elizabeth A., editor.

Series:

DQR studies in literature ; Volume 26.

DQR Studies in Literature Series ; Volume 26

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Comparative civilization.

Europe--Civilization--18th century.

Europe.

Europe--Civilization--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (225 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Revolutions and Watersheds

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam, The Netherlands : Editions Rodopi B.V., [1999]

Summary:

The years between 1775 and 1815 constitute a crucial episode in the evolutionary history of Europe and America. Between the start of the American Revolution, with the first armed clashes between British regulars and American militiamen at Concord and Lexington, and the closing act of the French Revolution, with the eclipse of Napoleon's dreams of pan-European glory on the battlefield of Waterloo, America and Europe witnessed the rise and fall of radicalism, which left virtually no aspect of public and private life untouched. While the American colonies managed to wrench themselves away from their colonial parent, and while France careered down the stormy rapids of its own Revolution, Great Britain went through the turbulent process of redefining itself vis-à-vis both these emerging nations, and the world at large. But the period 1775 to 1815 offers more than the two ideological Revolutions that determined the face of modern America and Europe: feeding into and emanating from these Revolutions there were major watersheds in virtually all areas of cultural, intellectual and political life - varying from the rise of Romanticism to the birth of abolitionism, and from the beginnings of modern feminism to the creation of modern nationhood and its enduring cultural stereotypes. In this collection of interdisciplinary essays, historians and literary critics from both sides of the Atlantic analyze a broad spectrum of the watersheds and faultlines that arose in this formative era of Euro-American relations. Individually, the essays trace one or more of the transatlantic patterns of intellectual, cultural or scientific cross-pollination between the Old and the New World, between pre- and post-Revolutionary modes and mores. Collectively, the essays argue that the many revolutions that produced the national ideologies, identities and ideas of state of present-day America and Europe did not merely play a role in national debates, but that they very much belonged to an intricate network of transnational and, more particularly, transatlantic dialogues.

Contents:

Intro

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Revolutions &amp

Watersheds

PREFACE

PART I: CROSSING CULTURES / CROSSING DISCOURSES

Translation in Uncertain Times: The Case of Bürger's "Lenore"

Burke, Bartram, and the Sublime: The Spectacle of Death and the Limits of Representation

Movement, Melancholia, and Madness: American and British Health Travelers in Post-Napoleonic Europe

PART II: CONSTRUCTIONS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

"Straight" Sam Meets "Lewd" Louis: American Perceptions of French Sexuality, 1775-1815

The Marquise and the Butter-Churn: The American Education of the Marquise de la Tour du Pin

Thomas Jefferson, Charles Willson Peale, and The Great American Incognitum

PART III: GENDER, RACE, AND REFORM

Mass African Suicide and the Rise of the Euro-American Sentimental: Equiano's and Stevenson's Tales of the Semi-Periphery

Two Generations of Women's Abolitionist Poetry: Nation to Transnation, Revolution to Metaphor

"The Bloody Writing is for ever torn": Inscribing Slavery in the 1790s

"Espousing the Cause of Oppressed Women": Cultural Captivities in Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789004490390

9004490396

OCLC:

606442431

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004490390 DOI