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The Soldier's Two Bodies - Military Sacrifice and Popular Sovereignty in Revolutionary War Veteran Narratives (Hardcover)
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The Soldier's Two Bodies - Military Sacrifice and Popular Sovereignty in Revolutionary War Veteran Narratives (Hardcover)
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In The Soldier's Two Bodies, James M. Greene investigates an
overlooked genre of early American literature- the Revolutionary
War veteran narrative- showing that it by turns both promotes and
critiques a notion of military heroism as the source of U.S.
sovereignty. Personal narratives by veterans of the American
Revolution indicate that soldiers in the United States have been
represented in two contrasting ways from the nation's first days:
as heroic symbols of the body politic and as human beings whose
sufferings are neglected by their country. Published from 1779
through the late 1850s, narrative accounts of Revolutionary War
veterans' past service called for recognition from contemporary
audiences, inviting readers to understand the war as a moment of
violence central to the founding of the nation. Yet, as Greene
reveals, these calls for recognition at the same time underscored
how many veterans felt overlooked and excluded from the sovereign
power they fought to establish. Although such narratives stem from
a discourse that supports centralized, continental nationalism,
they disrupt stable notions of a unified American people by
highlighting those left behind. Greene discusses several well-known
examples of the genre, including narratives from Ethan Allen,
Joseph Plumb Martin, and Deborah Sampson, along with Herman
Melville's fictional adaptation of the life of Israel Potter.
Additional chapters focus on accounts of postwar frontier actions,
including narratives collected by Hugh Henry Brackenridge that
voice concerns over populist violence, along with stranger
narratives like those of Isaac Hubbell and James Roberts, which
register as fantastic imitations of the genre commenting on
antebellum racial politics. With attention to questions of
historical context and political ideology, Greene charts the
process by which veteran narratives promote exception, violence,
and autonomy, while also encouraging restraint, sacrifice, and
collectivity. Revolutionary War veteran narratives offer no easy
solutions to the appropriation of veterans' lives within military
nationalism and sovereign violence. But by bringing forward the
paradox inherent in the figure of the U.S. soldier, the genre
invites considerations of how to reimagine those representations.
Drawing attention to paradoxes presented by the memory of the
American Revolution, The Soldier's Two Bodies locates the origins
of a complicated history surrounding the representation of veterans
in U.S. politics and culture.
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