Quixotic Fictions of the USA 1792-1815 [Hardcover]

Quixotic Fictions of the USA 1792-1815explores the conflicted and conflicting interpretations ofDon Quixoteavailable to and deployed by disenchanted writers of America's new republic. It argues that the legacy ofDon Quixoteprovided an ambiguous cultural icon and ironic narrative stance that enabled authors to critique with impunity the ideological fictions shoring up their fractured republic. Close readings of works such asModern Chivalry,Female Quixotism, andThe Algerine Captivereveal that the fiction from this period repeatedly engaged with Cervantes's narrative in order to test competing interpretations of republicanism, to interrogate the new republic's multivalent crises of authority, and to question both the possibility and the desirability of an isolationist USA and an autonomous American literature.

Sarah Wood's study is the first book-length publication to examine the role ofDon Quixotein early American literature. Exploring the extent to which the literary culture of North America was shaped by a diverse range of influences, it addresses an issue of growing concern to scholars of American history and literature.Quixotic Fictionsreaffirms the global reach of Cervantes's influence and explores the complex, contradictory ways in whichDon Quixotehelped shape American fiction at a formative moment in its development.

1. An 'Inconsistent Discourse':Don Quixotein British Letters
2. Transatlantic Cervantics:Don Quixotein the New Republic
3. City on the Hill, Quixote in the Cave: The Politics of Retreat in the Fiction of Hugh Henry Brackenridge
4. An Alien's Act of Sedition: 'Trans-atlantic peculiarities' and North African Attachments inThe Algerine Captive
5. Private Properties, Public Nuisance:Arthur Mervynand the Rise and Fall of a Republican Quixote
6. Nobody's Dulcinea: Romantic Fictions and Republican Mothers in TlsB