Landscape and Written Expression in Revolutionary America: The World Turned Upside Down

This book attempts an interpretation of Revolutionary American culture. It argues that the cultural identity of the United States, like its political identity, emerged from a quarrel with the Old World. Europeans believed that the Revolution had 'turned the world upside down'. American intellectuals tried to construct a republic which refuted European criticism. They failed, but in failing they created an attitude to the terrain which became a central theme in American culture. The book emp...