Title: Democratic personality
First published: 1998
Description: This book proposes a new view of the democratization of America by recasting democracy as a symbolic theater, historically realized in an untheorized and irrational public utterance that began with the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692 and extended through the Great Awakening and the antebellum era.

This discursive practice gave rise, as popular voice, to a distinctive mode of political and literary subjectivity, "democratic personality," which emerged without reference to the political-philosophical currents and attendant humanistic values that anticipated the formation of a liberal democratic society.

The author constructs a genealogy of democratic personality by examining the historical and, later, fictional theaters within which it emerged to redefine the relation of appearance to reality and thus challenge hierarchies of political and cultural power.
Subjects: Aesthetics, American, American Aesthetics, American literature, Authorship, Democracy in literature, History and criticism, Innocence (Psychology) in literature, National characteristics, American, in literature, Political aspects, Political aspects of Authorship, Politics and literature, Popular literature, Self in literature, St. john de crevecoeur, j. hector, 1735-1813, American literature, history and criticism, 19th century, Popular literature, history and criticism, National characteristics in literature, Aesthetics
Places: United States
People: J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur (1735-1813)
Time periods: 19th century
LC classification: PS201 .R85 1998