Voicing America : language, literary form, and the origins of the United States
In the early years of the republic, many nationalist writers associated the revolutionary founding of the United States with acts of voice; they believed that the new nation had been spoken into being. Washington Irving, for instance, in his Salmagundi, refers to the American nation as a "logocracy or government of words."
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xi, 287 pages ; 23 cm
9780226492827, 9780226492834, 0226492826, 0226492834
33246083
1. Logocracy in America
2. "The Affairs of the Revolution Occasion'd the Interruption": Self, Language, and Nation in Franklin's Autobiography
3. "The Very Act of Utterance": Law, Language, and Legitimation in Brown's Wieland
4. "Tongues of People Altercating With One Another": Language, Text and Society in Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry
5. Coda: The Voice of Patrick Henry
"Began as a dissertation in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University"--Page vii