Overview
- Argues narratives of piracy were significant for the formation of popular genres in print culture such as criminial biographies, popular history, and historical romance
- Identifies the power relationships, struggles over authority, and violence that relate to defining and identifing the pirate figure
- Traces a transoceanic American literary and cultural imaginary of piracy
Part of the book series: Maritime Literature and Culture (MILAC)
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About this book
This Open Access book, Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy: 1678-1865, examines literary and visual representations of piracy beginning with A.O. Exquemelin’s 1678 Buccaneers of America and ending at the onset of the US-American Civil War. Examining both canonical and understudied texts—from Puritan sermons, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Red Rover, and Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” to the popular cross-dressing female pirate novelette Fanny Campbell, and satirical decorated Union envelopes, this book argues that piracy acted as a trope to negotiate ideas of legitimacy in the contexts of U.S. colonialism, nationalism, and expansionism. The readings demonstrate how pirates were invoked in transatlantic literary production at times when dominant conceptions of legitimacy, built upon categorizations of race, class, and gender, had come into crisis. As popular and mobile maritime outlaw figures, it is suggested, piratesasked questions about might and right at critical moments of Atlantic history.
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Keywords
Table of contents (4 chapters)
Reviews
“A highly successful book in its conceptual-theoretical analysis of the pirate as a figure of empire, as a prototype for different legalistic-political orders in the Americas, and as a foil for divergent discursive formations and shift. Deep read and methodologically well thought-out throughout.” (Udo Hebel, former Chair of the International Committee of the American Studies Association/ASA)
“The author breaks new ground by wresting hitherto little explored material from the archive. But above all, it is the comprehensive synopsis of various local scenarios and a consequent border-crossing perspective that render this study a masterpiece of remarkable originality. It contributes to freeing the figure of the pirate from the muck of romanticizing fictions, rethinking the pirate as a central ideological category and a sign of societal crisis. This is a great and superbly presented achievement.” (Gesa Mackenthun, author of Metaphors of Dispossession: American Beginnings and the Translation of Empire, 1492–1637 (1997) and Fictions of the Black Atlantic in American Foundational Literature (2004))
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Alexandra Ganser is Professor of American Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, where she also heads the interdisciplinary research platform and PhD program “Mobile Cultures and Societies” and co-directs the Centre for Canadian Studies. Focusing on mobility in North American literature and culture in her work, she has received research awards and grants in Austria, Germany, the UK, and the US.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy
Book Subtitle: 1678-1865
Authors: Alexandra Ganser
Series Title: Maritime Literature and Culture
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43623-0
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-43622-3Published: 12 August 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-43625-4Published: 18 September 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-43623-0Published: 11 August 2020
Series ISSN: 2634-5366
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5358
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVI, 289
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 12 illustrations in colour
Topics: North American Literature, Comparative Literature, Literary History