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Counterfeit States: Bootleg Currency and Postrevolutionary American Property

Sharada Balachandran Orihuela

in Fugitives, Smugglers, and Thieves: Piracy and Personhood in American Literature

This chapter looks to overlapping discussions of American economic health and growth to present a complex story about the circulation of currency as well as the circulation of late-eighteenth century ... More

This chapter looks to overlapping discussions of American economic health and growth to present a complex story about the circulation of currency as well as the circulation of late-eighteenth century conceptions of American personhood in the works of Charles Brockden Brown and Stephen Burroughs. These imaginative accounts of counterfeiting dramatize the intimate bonds of normative conceptions of citizenship and national currency. This chapter shows how discourses of counterfeiting distinctly frame the social and political geographies of the early American republic. Moreover, the lack of uniform paper currency in the early Republic (which produces social, political, and economic instability) mimics the lack of a uniform understanding of national citizenship in this same period to such a degree that some late eighteenth century authors respond to this dual precarity by proposing that counterfeiting a uniquely American form of self-making, both because the counterfeiting enterprise gives rise to new, albeit economically unstable, homo economici, and because these new economic bodies are themselves forging and/or imitating the dress, behaviors, and codes of propriety in order to capitalize on counterfeit currency. Thus, counterfeiting alleviates some of the anxiety about the lack of uniform national citizenship.Less

The Transformation, the Self Devoted, and the Dead Recalled: Sympathy in Brown's Fiction

Caleb Crain

in American Sympathy: Men, Friendship, and Literature in the New Nation

This chapter presents a reading of three of Charles Brockden Brown's novels as parables of deformed sympathy. These are Wieland, Arthur Mervyn, and Edgar Huntly.

Sight and the City

Wendy Bellion

in Citizen Spectator: Art, Illusion, and Visual Perception in Early National America

This chapter illustrates how eighteen-year-old Arthur Mervyn encountered a world that confounded his senses. Raised on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, some forty-five miles to the south, Mervyn was a ... More

This chapter illustrates how eighteen-year-old Arthur Mervyn encountered a world that confounded his senses. Raised on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, some forty-five miles to the south, Mervyn was a newcomer in search of work as a mechanic's apprentice. Fascinated by the lights and sights of the busy concourse, Mervyn surrendered his self-awareness to the dizzying swirl of the urban street. Unfamiliar things captivated his eyes; his footsteps barely registered as his vision succumbed to marvel. However, Mervyn soon paid the price for his sensory absorption: pausing to rest in a stall after strolling the length of the market sheds, he quickly forgot the small bundle of belongings he had carried with him. When he returned to the market a short time later in search of his pack, it was too late. A thief had claimed his possessions. So begins a story of misperception and loss.Less