Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American Nation

Romances of the Republic contributes to the lively field of scholarship on the interconnection of ideology and history in early American literature. Shirley Samuels illustrates the relations of sexual, political, and familial rhetoric in American writing from 1790 to the 1850s. With special focus on depictions of the American Revolution and on the use of the family as a model and instrument of political forces, she examines how the historical novel formalizes the more extravagant features o...