Synopses & Reviews
This book proposes a new view of the democratization of America by recasting democracy as a symbolic theater, historically realized in an untheorized and irrational public utterance that began with the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692 and extended through the Great Awakening and the antebellum era. This discursive practice gave rise, as popular voice, to a distinctive mode of political and literary subjectivity, “democratic personality,” which emerged without reference to the political-philosophical currents and attendant humanistic values that anticipated the formation of a liberal democratic society.
The author constructs a genealogy of democratic personality by examining the historical and, later, fictional theaters within which it emerged to redefine the relation of appearance to reality and thus challenge hierarchies of political and cultural power. Its history, as outlined in the first half of the book, traces how colonial culture forsook Puritan cosmology to embrace the complex cultural semiosis of a democratic society based on the representational potential of the individual. As a strategy for self-production that spurred an urgent inquiry into the ontological status of representation, democratic personality crucially influenced the rise of a national literature by complicating the ideological problem of establishing a “democratic” poetics.
The second half of the book examines the development—in the work of Brown, Crèvecoeur, Burroughs, Cooper, Emerson, and Whitman—of an American “aesthetic of innocence.” As a platform for the production of a national literature that would claim a unique exemption from the deformations of fiction, the aesthetic of innocence evolved into the practice of a literary eugenics that intended to domesticate democratic personality by embracing its primitive energies as uniquely American while attempting to contain the subversive uncontainability of its voice. The book concludes with a reading of Billy Budd, Melville’s novelistic rejection of liberal culture’s attempt to domesticate democratic personality.
Review
"This magisterial book puts forward the thesis that the process of democratization occurred historically on the microlevel of the individual, not on the level of the nation state. It begins by examining the rise of democratic character in colonial America within two 'aberrant' social spaces, those of the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692 and the Great Awakening of the 1740's. The book then moves to analyses of various literary manifestations of the desire to establish a national democratic character, including Brown's Wieland (1798), Crevècoeur's Letters and the writings of Cooper, Whitman, Emerson, and Melville. A stunning interpretation of American democratic culture in its full complexity." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Synopsis
“This work is of the highest importance. The chapters on the Salem witch-hunt and the Great Awakening are filled with brilliant insights and constitute a significant new interpretation of popular religion in colonial America. The detailed treatments of Wieland, The Last of the Mohicans, and Billy Budd achieve something of a tour de force of literary criticism as Ruttenburg relates them to the problem of ‘authorship’ in Federal and antebellum America. In its originality and ambitious linkages, the study is sui generis.”—Alan Heimert, Harvard University
“The study is a must for any American Studies scholar interested in the roots of American democracy not as an institution but as a popular and literary experience and representation.”—Zeitshrift für Anglistik und Amerikanististik
Synopsis
An analysis of popular responses to key historical events in works of American literature.
Synopsis
This book proposes a new view of the democratization of America, identifying democracy as the irrational public utterance that began with the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692 and extended through the Great Awakening and the pre-war era. This discursive practice gave rise, as popular voice, to a distinctive mode of political and literary subjectivity, 'democratic personality', which emerged without reference to the political-philosophical currents and attendant humanistic values that anticipated the formation of a liberal democratic society. The author examines this voice as it appears in the writings of major American literary figures including Brown, Crèvecoeur, Burroughs, Cooper, Emerson, and Whitman, and in works like The Last of the Mohicans and Billy Budd.
Synopsis
The author examines American popular responses in both history and fiction, looking at events like the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692, and the Great Awakening, at writers including Burroughs, Cooper, Emerson and Whitman, and works like The Last of the Mohicans, and Billy Budd.
Synopsis
This book looks at popular responses to certain key historical events in works of American literature, and argues that these responses were at odds with the liberal views being expressed by leading politicians of the day. The author examines this voice in both history and fiction, looking at events like the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692, and the Great Awakening, at writers including Burroughs, Cooper, Emerson and Whitman, and works like The Last of the Mohicans, and Billy Budd.
Table of Contents
Introduction; Part I: 1. The devil in the damsel: spectral evidence; 2. Spectacular conversion: George Whitefield and the rise of democratic personality; 3. The advent of the individual: democratic personality and the spectral self; Part II: 4. The voice of the people, the voice of the specter; 5. The crisis of American character; 6. An American aesthetic of innocence: domesticating democratic personality; 7. Melville's anxiety of innocence: the handsome sailor; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.