Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy

This Open Access book, Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy: 1678-1865 , examines literary and visual representations of piracy beginning with A.O. Exquemelin's 1678 Buccaneers of America and ending at the onset of the US-American Civil War. Examining both canonical and understudied textsfrom Puritan sermons, James Fenimore Cooper's The Red Rover , and Herman Melville's Benito Cereno to the popular cross-dressing female pirate novelette Fanny Campbell , and satirical decorated Union envelopes, this book argues that piracy acted as a trope to negotiate ideas of legitimacy in the contexts of U.S. colonialism, nationalism, and expansionism. The readings demonstrate how pirates were invoked in transatlantic literary production at times when dominant conceptions of legitimacy, built upon categorizations of race, class, and gender, had come into crisis. As popular and mobile maritime outlaw figures, it is suggested, piratesasked questions about might and right at critical moments of Atlantic history.

Argues narratives of piracy were significant for the formation of popular genres in print culture such as criminial biographies, popular history, and historical romance Identifies the power relationships, struggles over authority, and violence that relate to defining and identifing the pirate figure Traces a transoceanic American literary and cultural imaginary of piracy

Auteur

Alexandra Ganser is Professor of American Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, where she also heads the interdisciplinary research platform and PhD program "Mobile Cultures and Societies" and co-directs the Centre for Canadian Studies. Focusing on mobility in North American literature and culture in her work, she has received research awards and grants in Austria, Germany, the UK, and the US.

Texte du rabat

This Open Access book, Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy: 1678-1865, examines literary and visual representations of piracy beginning with A.O. Exquemelin s 1678 Buccaneers of America and ending at the onset of the US-American Civil War. Examining both canonical and understudied texts from Puritan sermons, James Fenimore Cooper s The Red Rover, and Herman Melville s Benito Cerenö to the popular cross-dressing female pirate novelette Fanny Campbell, and satirical decorated Union envelopes, this book argues that piracy acted as a trope to negotiate ideas of legitimacy in the contexts of U.S. colonialism, nationalism, and expansionism. The readings demonstrate how pirates were invoked in transatlantic literary production at times when dominant conceptions of legitimacy, built upon categorizations of race, class, and gender, had come into crisis. As popular and mobile maritime outlaw figures, it is suggested, piratesasked questions about might and right at critical moments of Atlantic history.

Contenu

1. Introduction: The Pirate as a Figure of Crisis and Legitimacy.- 2. Pirate Narratives and the Colonial Atlantic.- 3. Pirate Narratives and the Revolutionary Atlantic in the Early Republic and the Antebellum Period.- 4. Cultural Constructions of Piracy during the Crisis over Slavery.- 5. Coda.