Covenant and Republic
Historical Romance and the Politics of Puritanism

A 1997 study of historical romance in the early American republic, with a particular focus on the historical literature of Puritanism.

Philip Gould (Author)

9780521555326, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 June 2009

292 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

"An ambitious and well-researched first book that encompasses an immense body of historiography and fiction, it reconfigures scholarship on early national culture in important ways. These contributions will no doubt earn Covenant and Republic respected place in the canon of American culture studies." Carolyn L. Karcher, Modern Philology

Philip Gould investigates the cultural politics of historical memory in the early American republic, specifically the historical literature of Puritanism. By situating historical writing about Puritanism in the context of the cultural forces of Republicanism and liberalism, his study reconsiders the emergence of the historical romance in the 1820s, before the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This 1997 book not only aids the Americanist recovery of this literary period, but also brings together literary studies of historical fiction and historical scholarship of early Republican political culture; in doing so, it offers a persuasive account of just what is at stake when one reads literature of and about the past.

Introduction
1. The new Ebenezer: republican virtue, the puritan fathers, and early national history-writing
2. Catharine Sedgwick's 'Recital' of the Pequot War
3. Refashioning the Republic: gender, ideology, and the politics of virtue in Hobomok and Hope Leslie
4. The Hive of America: James Fenimore Cooper's The Wept of Wish-ton-Wish and the History of King Philip's War
5. Witch-hunting and the politics of reason
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]