Research Catalog

Title

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

Author

Downes, Paul

Publication

• New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• ©2015

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 297 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

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"--

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 172

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 172.

Subject

• Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679 > Influence
• Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679
• American literature > Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 > History and criticism
• American literature > Revolutionary period, 1775-1783 > History and criticism
• Sovereignty in literature
• Politics and literature > United States > History > 18th century
• United States > Intellectual life > 18th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

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.

Call Number

JFE 15-6543

ISBN

• 9781107085299
• 1107085292

LCCN

2014048686

OCLC

899880576

Author

Downes, Paul, author.

Title

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

Publisher

New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Copyright Date

©2015

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 172

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 172.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 15-6543