BOOK

Hobbes, sovereignty, and early American literature

Downes, Paul

2015

Overview

\"Hobbes, Sovereignty, and Early American Literature pursues the question of democratic sovereignty as it was anticipated, theorized and resisted in the American colonies and in the early United States. It proposes that orthodox American liberal accounts of political community need to be supplemented and challenged by the deeply controversial theory of sovereignty that was articulated in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan (1651). This book offers a radical re-evaluation of Hobbes's political theory and demonstrates how a renewed attention to key Hobbesian ideas might inform inventive re-readings of major American literary, religious and political texts. Ranging from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Puritan attempts to theorize God's sovereignty to revolutionary and founding-era debates over popular sovereignty, this book argues that democratic aspiration still has much to learn from Hobbes's Leviathan and from the powerful liberal resistance it has repeatedly provoked\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679 Influence. / Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679. / American literature Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 History and criticism. / American literature Revolutionary period, 1775-1783 History and criticism. / Sovereignty in literature. / Politics and literature United States History 18th century. / LITERARY CRITICISM - American - General. / United States Intellectual life 18th century.
• ISBN: 9781107085299, 1107085292

Item info:

1 item available

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
PS186.D69 2015	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE