Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Self-Effacement Of The "Author" To Circulate Texts : Strategies To Construct Authorship In Antebellum America, Rumi Takahashi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

From the post-Revolutionary days, American print materials and political institutions were interrelated with each other for the purpose of building a new nation. The democratic institutions composed of the president and a sovereign people marked the country's difference from European monarchy, while the book trade served as a means that would disseminate a moral image of an ideal citizen to endorse the national identity. Yet, as drastic changes of industry in the 1820s enabled more people to participate in the economic system, the sovereignty of people turned out to be potentially subversive power of the mob, which required the literary …