Yankee Yarns

Abstract

This book provides the first study of the Yankee’s many performances and bodies in 19th-century US literature and culture and uncovers his function as civilization machine. Yankee Doodle, Brother Jonathan, Uncle Sam, the Yankee Peddler and the Down Easter all share a knack for storytelling, ambiguity and fraudulence. Yankee Yarns shows his different roles, as allegory or theater type, as peddler or homespun New Englander, and omnipresence in US culture. He pops up in transatlantic, regional and sectional conflicts, in villages and cities, and across class boundaries. For nineteenth-century audiences at home and abroad, he becomes the hegemonic embodiment of America’s national character, its political and material culture, and the homespun agent of its imperial fantasies.