Nation(Re) Building through Popular Literature : The Myths of the American Revolution and the Cultural Dissemination of Antebellum Sensational/Sentimental Narratives

这个项目阐明了美国革命者的神话和精神如何与18世纪末和19世纪美国文化中出现的耸人听闻和感情用事有关。在调查过程中，特别关注以下几点：1)开国元勋的理想主义传记如何掩盖了美国独立和国家建设的定义矛盾；2)开国元勋的模范神话是如何自共和国时期以来被传播和接受的；3)这些潜在的矛盾是如何被掩盖的，如何滋养了美国的颠覆想象力；以及4)这种颠覆的美国精神是如何反映在南北战争前耸人听闻的/感伤的叙述中的。

This project clarifies how the myths and spirit of the American Revolutionary relate to the sensationalism and sentimentalism that emerged in American culture in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the course of investigation, the following points are especially focused on : 1) how idealistic biographical portraits of the Founding Fathers obscured defining contradictions of American Independence and nation building ; 2) how exemplary myths of the Founding Fathers have been disseminated and received since the Republican period ; 3) how these underlying contradictions, though obscured, nourished the subversive imagination in America ; and 4) how this subversive American spirit is reflected in antebellum sensational/sentimental narratives.