| As literary studies has departed from a nation-centric model of American literature in favor of a transnational approach that considers texts from North America, Europe, and the Caribbean, ideological, theoretical, and philosophical investigations of national origins have been eschewed in favor of materialist, historicist, and geographical readings of texts. The transnational approach foregrounds the recovery of forgotten writers, and incorporates archival materials as a means to better account for the range of texts and genres that circulated throughout the eighteenth century Atlantic world. However, the transnational approach is based largely on a historical narrative that distinguishes economic mobility from political power, and explains literary production as a product of seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth century economic development. Reading literary texts that contest this historical narrative, this project reveals a class-conscious assembly of writers who express deep skepticism of federal power and republicanism. Writing poetry, political pamphlets, regional histories, financial reports, novels, religious tracts, and short stories, these authors narrate founding era history in terms of economic relations, race, gender, and religion, and contest portrayals of a vibrant participatory democracy.;By demonstrating the centrality of class to the writings of Phillis Wheatley, Charles Brockden Brown, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Washington Irving, among others, this dissertation argues for a reconceptualization of the nation as an economic construct rather than a political construct. Putting these authors into conversation with progressive historians including Charles Beard, Terry Bouton, and William Hogeland shows a continuous contest over the terms of nation building that extends from the literature of the founding era through the literary nationalist movement of the early to mid-nineteenth century and into the history writing of our current day. |
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