After the Revolution
Description
Through portraits of four figures—Charles Willson Peale, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, William Dunlap, and Noah Webster—Joseph Ellis provides a unique perspective on the role of culture in post-Revolutionary America, both its high expectations and its frustrations.
An entrepreneur, a writer who wanted to depict an ideal society, a dramatist who tried to reconcile high aesthetic standards and populism, and a Connecticut Yankee who ran into the contradictions of conservatism and liberalism—each of the four men depicted in this book had a vision of what kind of society post-Revolutionary America should be. Through portraits of these bellwether figures, the prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis examines the currents that were shaping the new country.
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Content
- Intro
- Title
- Contents
- Preface
- Part One / Premonitions and Paradoxes in the Revolutionary Era
- Chapter One / Premonitions: An American Athens
- Chapter Two / Paradoxes: Culture and Capitalism
- Part Two / Profiles
- Chapter Three / Charles Willson Peale: Portrait of the American Artist as Virtuous Entrepreneur
- Chapter Four / Hugh Henry Brackenridge: The Novelist as Reluctant Democrat
- Chapter Five / William Dunlap: The Dramatist as Benevolent Patriarch
- Chapter Six / Noah Webster: The Connecticut Yankee as Nationalist
- Epilogue / New Critics: Toward Emerson
- Notes
- Praise for AFTER THE REVOLUTION
- About the Author
- About the Book
- Index
- Copyright
