From Nation of Virtue to Virtual Nation: Washington Irving and American Nationalism

Abstract

Washington Irving (1783–1859) began his literary career in the midst of the national identity crisis prompted by the transition from Federalist republicanism to Jeffersonian democracy. During the first decade of the nineteenth century Americans found themselves at odds over conflicting elitist and populist, public and private conceptions of the masculine persona representative of American nationality. On the one hand conservatives advocated an elitist conception of American character exemplified by the publicly virtuous legislator typical of classical republicanism. Democrats on the other hand advocated a popular conception of national character exemplified by the private liberal-democratic individual. The basic difference between these two personifications may be summed up as that between a corporatism that emphasizes duty to station and hierarchy over individual interests, and an individualism that emphasizes social mobility and self-interest over duty to social and political institutions.KeywordsNational CharacterPolitical InstitutionLiberal DemocracyPrivate SphereAmerican CharacterThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.