Literary Federalism in the Age of Jefferson

Joseph Dennie and The Port Folio, 1801-1812

• Author(s): William C. Dowling,
• Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
• Pages: 127
• ISBN_10: 1570032432
  ISBN_13: 9781570032431
  
• Language: en
• Categories: History / United States / 19th Century , History / Social History , Language Arts & Disciplines / Journalism , Literary Criticism / General , Literary Criticism / American / General , Political Science / Political Ideologies / General ,

Description:... "The triumphing of Jefferson's part will be but short," Dennie optimistically predicted in 1801. "Men will wake from the dreams of apathy, and the darkness of delusion." By the end of 1807, however, Dennie and the Port Folio writers had come to realize that they were on the losing side of history and that the triumph of Jeffersonian ideology would be total and permanent. Literary Federalism then originates as a tradition, argues William C. Dowling, in the attempt of Dennie and The Port Folio to provide a sanctuary for classical republican values within a separate world of the literary imagination, a mode of writing that might serve as a permanent refuge from the degraded conditions of American social existence.