{"product_id":"eclipse-of-empires-patricia-jane-roylance-9780817313821","title":"Eclipse of Empires: World History in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture","description":"\u003ci\u003eEclipse of Empires\u003c\/i\u003e analyzes the nineteenth-century American fascination with what Patricia Jane Roylance calls \"narratives of imperial eclipse,\" texts that depict the surpassing of one great civilization by another. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePatricia Jane Roylance's central claim in \u003ci\u003eEclipse of Empires\u003c\/i\u003e is that historical episodes of imperial eclipse, for example Incan Peru yielding to Spain or the Ojibway to the French, heightened the concerns of many American writers about specific intranational social problems plaguing the nation at the time--race, class, gender, religion, economics. Given the eventual dissolution of great civilizations previously plagued by these very same problems, many writers, unlike those who confidently emphasized U.S. exceptionalism, exhibited both an anxiety about the stability of American society and a consistent practice of self-scrutiny in identifying the national defects that they felt could precipitate America's decline. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRoylance studies, among other texts, James Fenimore Cooper's \u003ci\u003eThe Water-Witch\u003c\/i\u003e (1830) and \u003ci\u003eThe Bravo\u003c\/i\u003e (1831), which address the eclipse of Venice by New York City as a maritime power in the eighteenth century; William Hickling Prescott's \u003ci\u003eConquest of Peru\u003c\/i\u003e (1847), which responds to widespread anxiety about communist and abolitionist threats to the U.S. system of personal property by depicting Incan culture as a protocommunist society doomed to failure; and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's\u003ci\u003e The Song of Hiawatha\u003c\/i\u003e (1855), which resists the total eclipse of Ojibwa culture by incorporating Ojibway terms and stories into his poem and by depicting the land as permanently marked by their occupation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Patricia Jane Roylance\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0817313826\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780817313821\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University Alabama Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/01\/2013\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 240\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.14lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.00d","brand":"Patricia Jane Roylance","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":48086955852031,"sku":"9780817313821","price":44.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_a667eddf-c9bd-4356-bd63-9eaa1e794665.jpg?v=1769097467","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/eclipse-of-empires-patricia-jane-roylance-9780817313821","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}