Sentimental Democracy: Evolution of America's Romantic Self-Image

Rating:
Summary: A Solid Effort!
Review: Andrew Burstein's book reveals an obscure but important thread in U.S. cultural history. His discussion of the "Man of Feeling" and the culture of sensibility provides important background for understanding the American Revolutionary period. Since documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States often are read out of context (if they are read at all), Burstein helps you understand what they meant to their contemporaries. Burstein is almost too thorough in surveying 18th and 19th century literature for examples, and the book is slow going at times. But he also tries to show how these ideas persist in America's self-image. His contemporary analysis is skimpy, though - such as his attempt to explain Hollywood screenwriting conventions in terms of sentimental democracy. However, we [...] recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand some of the subtleties behind the events of early American history.


Rating:
Summary: How To Build A Mythic Discourse
Review: In SENTIMENTAL DEMOCRACY, Burstein periodizes and knits together the diverse strands of the sentimental and mythical rhetoric of the revolutionary generation and two post-revolutionary generations immediately following. He shows how Americans adopted and modified the language of sensibility of the Sternean sentimental novel, the Protestant rhetoric of individual responsibility, and the Lockean language of personal freedom as a way to justify the break with England, what later came to be the quasi-mystical core of what has sometimes been called the "American Creed."

He works hard to note shifts and modifications in the discourse according to internal and external threats. For example, he examines the beginning of "paranoid" era that began as factionalism crept into Washington's cabinet as Jefferson and Hamilton attempted to advance their very different views of the future of America. He notes the beginning of "manifest destiny" in the "Era of Good Feeling" which reflected the flexing of American muscle upon "winning" the War of 1812 He finishes up by taking us up through the Jacksonian era, where the discourse changed yet again as more citizens (men) were enfranchised, and discourse of the common man destroyed the elite Federalist appeals to aristocratic honor forever.

The American discourse initially partook of the notion of "sensibility" from Sterne, later from Crevouceur, modern "men of feeling" who displayed manly virtue balanced with warm-hearted sympathy and generosity. (Think of a perfect Jane Austen hero). To illustrate how the "man of feeling" was used by American patriots to articulate their rights to protest the abusive behavior of King George Burstein notes contemporary sources which articulated not just the language of the rights of Englishmen, but also the sentimental language of proper behavior, and manly fellow feeling. Burstein relates this evolving discourse through a lot of primary sources, including private letters, pamphlets, and key texts of the time such as writings by John Adams, Jefferson, Benjamin's Franklin and Rush.

Ultimately, the wide-ranging source material tends to sabotage the larger narrative about the changes in this discourse. It requires the maximum attention of the reader to recall how any given editorial or letter or historical document is being used to illustrate a certain period in the development and evolution of this language of feeling. Within a single paragraph, we may hear from Daniel Webster, a minor senator, a pastor and an editorialist. Too, sometimes the changes in rhetoric seem so small as to be very little different from the period immediately before or after. So while the overall point Burstein makes about how this romantic discourse served to engage the emotions, passions and the support of Americans against their colonial masters, and how later the populists like Jefferson and Jackson and their cohorts used a variation on this language when they scuttled Adams' presidency, and later the revitalized Whig/Federalists, the sheer number of sources and relatively small shifts in discourse sometimes induces frustration. Still it is a worthwhile and clearly important work that does fill a need in the history of the period. Interestingly, in many ways it is similar to AFFAIRS OF HONOR, both in terms of its thesis and density.

Two tidbits that I found particularly interesting in SENTIMENTAL DEMOCRACY: the persistence of the idea of the journey into the frontier of America as the journey into the 'realm of revelation,' (as dubbed recently by Furtwangler, the historian) a kind of sub-genre of the America as the Earthly Paradise genre. This is the sub-genre Lewis of Lewis & Clark used when he wrote up his notes as epiphanies, describing natural landmarks in mythic, epic language. Burstein is also good on the uses of the language of liberty and how is served as a screen (and still does) for imperial adventure. In speaking about the discourse of the frontier, Burstein's writes: "'...the rhetoric of happiness and liberty masked the assertion of raw, expansive power and the neglect of non-citizens' (Indian's) natural rights and moral welfare."

Further, he notes how this discourse served to create of the Indians, untrustworthy, inexplicable others: 'There was no safe place in republican America for a society [Indian society] that was not actively inventing the future...' This seems an apt commentary now, too. We hear it now most baldly in the hegemonic discourse of global business. To wit, an example heard every morning on National Public Radio, immediately following the business news, a show sponsored by General Electric: "At GE we believe knowing about the global economy is everybody's business." Prior to that, I recall they were bringing good things to life, another phrase that would fit very well into the 19th century rhetoric about the "taming" of the West and the "cultivation" of the frontier.