The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse

by Carol Nackenoff

Overview

Investigating the persistence and place of the formulas of Horatio Alger in American politics, The Fictional Republic reassesses the Alger story in its Gilded Age context. Carol Nackenoff argues that Alger was a keen observer of the dislocations and economic pitfalls of the rapidly industrializing nation, and devised a set of symbols that addressed anxieties about power and identity. As classes were increasingly divided by wealth, life chances, residence space, and culture, Alger maintained that Americans could still belong to one estate. The story of the youth who faces threats to his virtue, power, independence, and identity stands as an allegory of the American Republic. Nackenoff examines how the Alger formula continued to shape political discourse in Reagan's America and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195079234
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/14/1994
Pages:	13
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.56(h) x 1.27(d)
Lexile:	1410L (what's this?)

About the Author

Swarthmore College

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
1	Allegory of the Republic: On Interpretation and Method	3
2	A Unitarian Project for Moral Guidance	12
3	Republican Rites of Passage: Character and the Battle for Youth	33
4	Guidebooks for Survival in an Industrializing Economy	53
5	Saved From the Factory	78
6	Technology, Organizations, Corporations, and Capitalists	93
7	Natural Aristocracy in a Democracy: Authority, Power, and Politics	110
8	Money, Price, and Value: Alger's Interventions in the Market	133
9	Levelling and Its Limits	162
10	Reading Alger: Searching for Alger's Audience in the Literary Marketplace	181
11	The Mass Fiction Writer As Producer and Consumer: Power, Powerlessness, and Gender	206
12	Culture Wars	227
13	The Fictional Republic: Alger's Appeal to the American Political Imagination	261
	Notes	272
	References	336
	Name Index	354
	Subject Index	357

Editorial Reviews

"A wonderful book, written with flair and imagination. The Fictional Republic tells the story of Horatio Alger, the gilded age, and the contest to define America. In explaining why the Horatio Alger myth persists, Carol Nackenoff offers a powerful new reading of American political culture—as it was at the start of the century, as it is today."—James A. Morone, Brown University and author of The Democratic Wish

"Firmly grounded on the bedrock of biographical detail, The Fictional Republic perceptively analyzes the politics of Alger's novels. To my great delight, Carol Nackenoff goes far in retrieving a historical Alger whose writings have been appropriated in this century by success cultists and political consultants of every stripe."—Gary Scharnhorst, University of New Mexico

"Nackenoff's innovative exploration of the connections between politics and popular literature identifies the many ways in which Horatio Alger reflected and reinforced the political culture of his time."—Paul E. Peterson, Harvard University

"This is a splendid book in every way: it is well-conceived, superbly executed, and very well written. Nackenoff tells a marvelously insightful, subtle, and compelling story that is simultaneously an account of Alger and the nineteenth-century religious, philosophic, and political sources and meanings of his writings and an interpretation of the development of American political discourse. Students of popular culture could learn much from The Fictional Republic."—Gordon Schochet, Rutgers University

"A valuable contribution to American studies and American literary history. Especially helpful are the chapters on the development of readers and reading in America."—CHOICE

"Her book will engage scholars who are interested in how the nineteenth-century market destabilized value and identity."—The Journal of American History

"Nackenoff's The Fictional Republic is another step toward recovering who Alger was and what we as Americans have meant in evoking his name."—American Literature

From the Publisher