Atlantic Republic: The American Tradition in English Literature
Atlantic Republic traces the legacy of the United States both as
a place and as an idea in the work of English writers from 1776
to the present day. Seeing the disputes of the Reformation as a
precursor to this transatlantic divide, it argues that America
has operated since the Revolution as a focal point for various
traditions of dissent within English culture. By ranging over
writers from Richard Price and Susanna Rowson in the 1790s to
Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie at the turn of the twenty-first
century, the book argues that America haunts the English
literary tradition as a parallel space where ideology and
aesthetics are configured differently. Consequently, it
suggests, many of the key episodes in British history--
parliamentary reform in the 1830s, the imperial designs of the
Victorian era, the twentieth-century conflict with fascism, the
advance of globalization since 1980--have been shaped by
implicit dialogues with American cultural