Elisa Tamarkin charts the Anglophilia that emerged after the American Revolution and remains in the character of U.S. society and class, the style of academic life, and the idea of American intellectualism. But, as she shows, this Anglophilia was more than just an elite nostalgia; it was a popular devotion that made reverence for British tradition instrumental to the psychological innovations of democracy. Anglophilia spoke to fantasies of cultural belonging, polite sociability, and, finally, deference itself as an affective practice within egalitarian politics. Here, Tamarkin traces the wideranging effects of Anglophilia on American literature, art, and intellectual life in the early nineteenth century, as well as its influence in arguments against slavery, in the politics of the Union, and in the dialectics of liberty and loyalty before the Civil War. By working beyond narratives of British influence, Tamarkin highlights a more intricate culture of American response, one that included Whig elites, college students, radical democrats, urban immigrants, and even African Americans. Ultimately, Anglophilia argues that the love of Britain was not simply a fetish or form of shame - a release from the burdens of American culture - but an anachronistic structure of attachment in which U.S. identity was lived in other languages of national expression.

About the Author
Elisa Tamarkin is assistant professor of English at the University of California, Irvine.

Reviews
"Anglophilia takes a commonsensical subject - nineteenth-century adulation for and emulation of British culture - and shows us both why it doesn't mean what we thought and why it's worthy of closer study and more careful attention. This is a rare gem of a book: commandingly scholarly, interdisciplinary, original, arresting in its analyses, and utterly worthwhile in its arguments." - Dana Nelson, Vanderbilt University"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226789446
Author Elisa Tamarkin
Format Hardback
Page Count 384
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 709g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 16mm * 3mm