Presidents of American Fiction

Fashioning the U.S. Political Imagination

Inbunden, Engelska, 2022

Av Michael J. Blouin, USA) Blouin, Professor or Dr. Michael J. (Associate Professor, Milligan University

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The Presidents of American Fiction brings together American literature, history, and political science to explore the most influential fictionalized accounts of the presidency from the early 19th century to the time of Trump. Of late, popular understandings of the presidency are being radically re-written—consider, for example, the distinctive myths that accompanied the ascent of the Obama and Trump administrations—and many readers of all stripes are radically reimagining the office and its holder. Placing these changes within a broader cultural context, Michael J. Blouin investigates narratives involving fictional presidents, from the supposedly factual to the outright fantastical, within their distinct literary and historical moments.The author considers representative texts including works penned by James Fenimore Cooper from the Jacksonian moment, Gore Vidal in the age of Nixon and Vietnam, and Philip Roth in the neoliberal period. Through detailed readings that question how American presidents function as characters within the popular imagination, this book examines the presidency as a complex, ever-evolving trope, and in so doing enhances our appreciation of American literature’s inextricable link with American politics.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-12-01
Mått152 x 229 x 19 mm
Vikt472 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor224
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781501381706

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Michael J. Blouin is Associate Professor of English and the Humanities at Milligan University, USA, where he co-founded and now directs the Honors Program. He serves as chair for Literature, Politics, and Society for the Popular Culture Association (PCA/ACA), and is the author of Stephen King and American Politics (2021) and Mass-Market Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, 1972 – 2017 (2018).

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Moving Portraits of the President 1. James Fenimore Cooper’s Exceptional Presidents2. George Lippard and the Gothic President3. Williams Wells Brown and the Disembodied President4. The President in Books for Boys5. The President in Books for Girls6. Hamlin Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Tortured Heart of American Realism7. Gore Vidal and the Performative Presidency8. The Imperial Presidents of American LiteratureEpilogue: George Saunders and Presidential MelancholiaReferencesIndex

Michael Blouin has written a truly remarkable, and remarkably important, study of the American presidency here, treating major representations of the chief executive in works of fiction over nearly two centuries but looking beyond these visions as well. He takes into account the notion of ‘presidentialism’ itself, inviting us to see the office itself as a kind of necessary fiction, one that functions oddly in a supposedly democratic nation. Blouin’s book is, I think, a hugely interesting and important contribution to the aesthetics of politics, and it sheds light on how we live our corporate lives – not something one often sees in an academic study. This book deserves a wide and appreciative audience.