http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/10260959

Republican aesthetics and the discourse of conspiracy in federalist literature

My project suggests a dynamic relationship existed between early American fears of conspiracy and early American writing. Examining this public "paranoia" in the 1790s shows that Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Susanna Rowson, and Charles Brockden Brown all formulate the tropes available in conspiracy discourse as literary devices designed to facilitate melodramatic participation in Federalist civic discourse. Literary "plots", my study suggests, evolved from the more political and vigilant discourse fostered by republican fears of political plots. As a result, early American republicanism and its countersubversion helped in the development of the liberal, aesthetic participation in the public sphere we have come to associate with the nineteenth century and its authors.

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