The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National IdentityThe rapid rise in popularity of maps and geography handbooks in the eighteenth century ushered in a new geographic literacy among nonelite Americans. In a pathbreaking and richly illustrated examination of this transformation, Martin Bruckner argues that geographic literacy as it was played out in popular literary genres--written, for example, by William Byrd, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark--significantly influenced the formation of identity in America from the 1680s to the 1820s. Drawing on historical geography, cartography, literary history, and material culture, Bruckner recovers a vibrant culture of geography consisting of property plats and surveying manuals, decorative wall maps and school geographies, the nation's first atlases, and sentimental objects such as needlework samplers. By showing how this geographic revolution affected the production of literature, Bruckner demonstrates that the internalization of geography as a kind of language helped shape the literary construction of the modern American subject. Empirically rich and provocative in its readings, The Geographic Revolution in Early America proposes a new, geographical basis for Anglo-Americans' understanding of their character and its expression in pedagogical and literary terms. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Geodesy Writing and Colonial Identity in EighteenthCentury British America | 16 |
Geography Oratory and the Figuration of Identity in Revolutionary America | 51 |
3 Maps Spellers and the Semiotics of Nationalism in the Early Republic | 98 |
4 Geography Textbooks and Reading National Character | 142 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Algerine Captive alphabetic Ameri American Antiquarian Society American continent Anglo-American Atlas atlases authors become Boston British American Byrd Cambridge cartographic cartouche century character Charles Brockden Brown colonial colonists Conn context country’s cultural discourse early American early Republic Edgar Huntly eighteenth-century England English English language Essays European expedition expedition’s Federalist Figure genre geodetic geographic knowledge geographic writing geographical literacy geography books Geography Made Easy geography textbooks graphic grid Hidatsa History identity imagine imperial instruction Jane Talbot Jedidiah Morse Jefferson Joseph Lancaster Joshua Hempstead journals land landscape language lessons letters Lewis and Clark linguistic literary Literature London Mandan map image map’s mapmaker modern Morse’s narrative nation-state national map Native American Noah Webster North America novel numbers Philadelphia place-names plat political practice primers reader reading representation rhetoric social space spatial surveying surveyor territorial textual tion United Virginia voice Webster western William word York