The Soldier's Two Bodies: Military Sacrifice and Popular Sovereignty in Revolutionary War Veteran Narratives (Greene James)(Pevná vazba)

In The Soldier's Two Bodies, James M. Greene investigates an overlooked genre of early American literature--the Revolutionary War veteran narrative--showing that it by turns both promotes and critiques a notion of military heroism as the source of U.S. sovereignty. Personal narratives by veterans of the American Revolution indicate that soldiers in the United States have been represented in two contrasting ways from the nation's first days: as heroic symbols of the body politic and as human beings whose sufferings are neglected by their country. Published from 1779 through the late 1850s, narrative accounts of Revolutionary War veterans' past service called for recognition from contemporary audiences, inviting readers to understand the war as a moment of violence central to the founding of the nation. Yet, as Greene reveals, these calls for recognition at the same time
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