Exceptionalism, the notion that Americans have a distinct and
special destiny different from that of other nations, permeates
every period of American history. It is the single most powerful
force in forming the American identity.
In "American Exceptionalism" Deborah L. Madsen traces this
powerful theory from its origins in Puritan and Revolutionary-era
writing to its latest manifestations in the Vietnam conflict and in
current films and fiction.
The growth of the idea is complex. In the 1600s the
Massachusetts Bay colonists believed that God had intervened to
create in America a "redeemer nation," as is shown in the writings
of Mary Rowlandson, William Bradford, and John Cotton. From the
perspective of works by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville
comes the nineteenth-century vision of expansion and dispossession
of Native Americans. Later, antislavery writers wielded the
rhetoric of exceptionalism against "the peculiar institution."
Recent history of American exceptionalism is revealed in the
culture of movie Westerns and revisions of the American myth as
shown by the novels of Larry McMurtry, Toni Morrison, and Thomas
Pynchon.
Alongside each chapter on American perspectives, Madsen places
the counterweight of views from Native Americans, Chicanos, and
non-Americans. The result is a balanced and thorough sounding of
the New World superpower's legacy to the Old World.
"One has a good sense, from this book," says Miles Orvell, "that
exceptionalism is not to be dismissed or condemned out of hand (as
some are wont to do these days) but must be understood in all its
complexity, as a source of America's distinct cultural shape, for
better or worse. Madsen succeeds in bringing an intelligent
detachment and broadly-informed perspective to an issue that is
fraught with passion on all sides."
Deborah L. Madsen is a professor of English at South Bank
University in London.
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