Authority, Autonomy, and Representation in American Literature, 1776-1865

From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, a familiar scene appears and reappears in American literature: a speaker stands before a crowd of men and women, attempting to mitigate their natural suspicions in order to form a body of federated wills. In this important study of the relationship of literature and politics, Mark Patterson argues that this scene restates political issues in literary te...