Description
Book SynopsisInnovative in its scope and conceptual frameworks, Creole America reveals how literary culture in the New Republic is formed by a push for commercial empire in the hemisphere via the routes of the treacherous West Indian trades and, in turn, aestheticizes U.S.-West Indian relations as an integral aspect of the national imaginary.
Trade Review"
Creole America is a compelling and original work that makes a major contribution to the current critical effort to remap the cultural and literary terrain of America from a transnational perspective. . . . Goudie gives us many wonderfully rich readings and insights, which as a whole will make it impossible to think of early American culture separate from its Caribbean connections." * Amy Kaplan, author of
The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture *
"This startling book brings more fully to light the hold that the West Indies had on the American imagination in the era of the new republic and, as such, moves away from an idea of American exceptionalism to one of conflicted, trans-Caribbean notions of identity that affect the production of texts in a variety of genres: nonfiction prose, novel, poetry, and drama. . . . Refreshingly new and provocative." * Jeffrey H. Richards, author of
Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic *
"Goudie opens new doors in his compelling treatment of transnational and transcultural conflict. Based on extensive archival research, and including both historical and analytical frames of reference, this book studies the emergence of an enduring creole complex in America and the Caribbean in the years following the Revolutionary War." * MLA award citation *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: "Our nation is a Caribbean Nation": The West Indies and Early U.S. America
PART 1: PARACOLONIALISM AND THE NEW REPUBLIC'S CREOLE COMPLEX
1. Locating the Prenational Origins of Paracolonialism and the Creole Complex: Benjamin Franklin's Late Colonial Encounters with the West Indies
2. Alexander Hamilton and a U.S. Empire for Commerce
PART 2: WRITING THE CREOLE REPUBLIC
3. Paracolonial Ambivalence in the Poetics of Philip Freneau
4. The West Indies, Commerce, and a Play for U.S. Empire: Recovering J. Robinson's The Yorker's Stratagem (1792)
5. Charles Brockden Brown's West Indian Specie(s)
Afterword: The Afterlife of Cora Munro
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
