Brown and Classicism

2019 ◽  
pp. 454-468
Author(s):  
Oliver Scheiding
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Charles Brockden Brown ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
Early National ◽  
National Period

Charles Brockden Brown embraced the classical tradition in English literature, as can be seen from his many references to Greek and Roman historiographers, poets, and philosophers. His retellings of ancient events and his portraits of classical figures questioned central maxims in the writing of history which derived from Cicero and had been practiced by the later school of eighteenth-century exemplary historiography. While Brown’s classicism has been frequently interpreted along the line of the growing political tensions in the 1790s, this chapter shows that his adaptations of classical sources are motivated less by a partisan spirit than by Brown’s understanding of himself as a civic commentator and public intellectual. Brown’s Roman stories and his numerous essays on topics related to classical antiquity have to be seen as an intervention in the formation and enlargement of public opinion in the early national period.

Abandoned Quarries

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-136
Author(s):  
Seth Perry
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Early National ◽  
American National Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Period

This concluding chapter discusses the consequences of biblicism in the early national period for subsequent American religious history. It considers bible culture in the later nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on how the corporatization of religious printing amplifed the Bible's status as an abstract commodity. Responding to the arguments put forward by W. P. Strickland in his 1849 History of the American Bible Society, the chapter argues that attaching the Bible's importance to American national identity could not leave the Bible unchanged, because that is not how scripturalization works. It also explains how the Bible's availability for citation and re-citation fundamentally changed the desire, effectiveness, and circumstances of its citation. Finally, it uses the abandoned quarry—empty because it has flled other places—as a figure for the themes of citation, performance, and identity explored in this book.

The Development of American Laissez Faire

1943 ◽  
Vol 3 (S1) ◽  
pp. 51-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick K. Henrich
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Important Influence ◽  
Early National Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Political Group ◽  
Early National ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
National Period

The pamphlet literature and the public documents of our early national period show that in spite of repeated instances of governmental interference in economic life, a great deal of thinking was being done along laissez-faire lines. This thought was unsystematic. It was pragmatic rather than philosophical, never doctrinaire, concerned primarily with defending and attacking specific measures of public policy. Nevertheless, it was serious thought, and in many instances had an important influence on legislative action. It was not restricted to any political group, but pervaded to a greater or less degree the thinking of all leaders of the community. Owing little to the teachings of contemporary European economists, American libertarianism deserves analysis as an indigenous body of theory, growing out of, and adjusted to American conditions.

The Greco-Roman Revival

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Halmi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Traditional Notion ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Romantic Poetry ◽  
Classical Myths ◽  
Modern Greece

During the eighteenth century an emergent historicism, which differentiated modernity radically from past ages, questioned the traditional notion of a ‘classical tradition’ of timeless values exemplified in Greek and Roman works. Classical antiquity began to be understood as a repository of historical artefacts associated, in part nostalgically, with ‘primitive’ ways of thought. Such recognition of the distance between modernity and antiquity paradoxically encouraged identification with the latter, since antiquarian research permitted increasingly accurate imitation of classical forms in the visual arts from the 1750s, while anthropological reflection on myth stimulated a revival of mythological poetry from the 1810s. Yet British Romantic poetry, whether describing classical artworks or appropriating classical myths, engaged with classical antiquity ambivalently, often ironically. While espousing the Philhellenist cause of Greek independence from Ottoman rule, Byron and Shelley remained very conscious of the disparities between ancient and modern Greece.

Well Begun: Chronicles of the Early National Period

1990 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 600
Author(s):  
William D. Barber ◽  
Stephen L. Schechter ◽  
Richard B. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Early National Period ◽  
Early National ◽  
National Period

scholarly journals Joseph Welsh: A British Santanista (Mexico, 1832)

2004 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILL FOWLER
Keyword(s):  
Early National Period ◽  
Early National ◽  
National Period ◽  
The Government ◽  
British Perspective ◽  
Mexican Politics

Joseph Welsh was the British Vice Consul in the port of Veracruz at the time of the uprising of 1832 by General Antonio López de Santa Anna against the government of Anastasio Bustamante. Contravening the orders of his superiors, who reiterated the view that it was his obligation to observe the strictest neutrality in the conflict and not interfere in Mexican politics, Welsh found himself supporting Santa Anna and the rebels. As a result, at the end of March, Bustamante's administration demanded that he be removed from office. The British Minister Plenipotentiary, Richard Pakenham, acquiesced. This article provides a narrative of the events that led to Welsh's forced resignation and explores what they tell us about British diplomacy in Mexico during the early national period. It also analyses Welsh's understanding of the revolt and his views on Santa Anna, providing some insights, from a generally ignored British perspective, into Santa Anna's notorious appeal and politico-military measures.

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