Description
Book SynopsisWhat made the United States what it is began long before a shot was fired at a redcoat in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1775. The theories of reading developed by John Locke were the means by which a revolutionary attitude toward authority was disseminated throughout the British colonies in North America.
Trade ReviewAccording to Brown, Locke furnishes American culture with a key political and psychological innovation: the understanding of the provisional state of childhood as simultaneously a social institution and a paradigm of freedom. Locke's entitlement of childhood with rights and desires is a critical element in the formation of the liberal state. Brown convincingly demonstrates that the story of the consenting child (whose desires constantly play off constraints to those desires) is 'the original story of the American republic.'
The Consent of the Governed offers a penetrating and often dazzling account of the 'liberal paradox of freedom and determinism' as it is engaged by early American literature and pedagogy. -- Jay Fliegelman, author of
Declaring IndependenceWhen all the talk is of the manipulation of the governed, it is particularly useful to understand just how the information revolution was waged in the cause of informing consent. Gillian Brown's erudite and elegantly argued new book recovers the viability of that cause and proposes a historically sophisticated and nuanced vision of the liberal polity, in the eighteenth century and today. -- Myra Jehlen, author of
American IncarnationMoving from the political and education philosophy of John Locke through the education of the newly discovered 'child' in eighteenth-century and early national America to the equally newly emergent American woman as described in novels, this superb book tells a fascinating story about the insertion of the consenting person into the American political psyche. This is a work that should be read by political theorists, cultural and literary historians, and cultural critics who are willing to have their conventional views challenged. -- Gordon Schochet, author of
The Authoritarian Family and Political Attitudes in 17th-Century EnglandTable of ContentsI. The Lockean Legacy Introduction: The Informed Consent of the Governed 1. The Child's Consent, the Child's Task 2. The Liberal Lessons of the New England Primer 3. Fables and the Forming of Americans 4. Paine's Vindication of the Rights of Children II. Consent and the Early American Novel Introduction: The Feminization of Consent 5. Coquetry and Its Consequences 6. The Quixotic Fallacy Epilogue Notes Acknowledgments Index
