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Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature
288
by Ivy Schweitzer
Ivy Schweitzer
![Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.8.5)
Perfecting Friendship: Politics and Affiliation in Early American Literature
288
by Ivy Schweitzer
Ivy Schweitzer
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Overview
Contemporary notions of friendship regularly place it in the private sphere, associated with feminized forms of sympathy and affection. As Ivy Schweitzer explains, however, this perception leads to a misunderstanding of American history. In an exploration of early American literature and culture, Schweitzer uncovers friendships built on a classical model that is both public and political in nature. Schweitzer begins with Aristotle's ideal of "perfect" friendship that positions freely chosen relationships among equals as the highest realization of ethical, social, and political bonds. Evidence in works by John Winthrop, Hannah Foster, James Fenimore Cooper, and Catharine Sedgwick confirms that this classical model shaped early American concepts of friendship and, thus, democracy. Schweitzer argues that recognizing the centrality of friendship as a cultural institution is critical to understanding the rationales for consolidating power among white males in the young nation. She also demonstrates how women, nonelite groups, and minorities have appropriated and redefined the discourse of perfect friendship, making equality its result rather than its requirement. By recovering the public nature of friendship, Schweitzer establishes discourse about affection and affiliation as a central component of American identity and democratic community.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780807857786 |
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Publisher: | The University of North Carolina Press |
Publication date: | 12/30/2006 |
Edition description: | 1 |
Pages: | 288 |
Product dimensions: | 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.65(d) |
About the Author
Ivy Schweitzer is professor of English at Dartmouth College. She is author and coeditor of three other books, including The Work of Self-Representation: Lyric Poetry in Colonial New England (from the University of North Carolina Press).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The Renascence of Friendship: A Story of American Social and Political Life 1
Smoke and Mirrors: A History of Equality and Interchangeability in Friendship Theory 27
"Familiar Commerce": John Winthrop's "Modell" of American Affiliation 73
Hannah Webster Foster's Coquette: Resurrecting Friendship from the Tomb of Marriage 103
Eat Your Heart Out: James Fenimore Cooper's Male Romance and the American Myth of Interracial Friendship 133
The Ethical Horizon of American Friendship in Catharine Sedgwick's Hope Leslie 165
Epilogue: The Persistence of Second Selves 207
Notes 211
Works Cited 239
Index 259
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
Schweitzer's innovative look at a history of alternative versions of affiliation is intriguing and provocative, opening new possibilities for thinking about the way in which affiliation operates in institutionalized and deinstitutionalized ways to shape culture and politics.Elizabeth M. Dillon, Yale University
Extensively researched, this timely contribution to a field now welcoming new energy and insights adds an important dimension to our understanding of the figure of friendship in colonial American literature.Leonard Tennenhouse, Brown University
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