TY - JOUR

T1 - Modern Chivalry’s Colonialism

AU - Brasch, Ilka

N1 - Funding Information: I would like to express my gratitude to Cornelia King and James Green at the Library Company of Philadelphia and to Dan Richter and everyone at the McNeil Center for welcoming me as a visitor in 2019. I also thank the Fulbright Commission and the German Association for American Studies for funding my research at the time. Special thanks go to Ruth Mayer and Abigail Fagan for reading the first draft of the article, as well as to the reviewers and editors.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s sevenvolume novel Modern Chivalry comments on and satirizes the people and politics of the early Republic. In the narrative, Indigenous characters are largely absent, yet the novel insists on the idea of their former presence. Imagined Indigenous absence in the text serves to help frontier settlers seek integration into a national whole and avoid feeling subjugated by Philadelphia’s political elites. A close analysis of the novel reveals a western perspective that aimed to colonize without being colonized. Modern Chivalry’s publication history echoes the West’s hopes to integrate into the expansionist nation, and specific deletions from later editions of the text further erase even the idea of an Indigenous presence on the frontier. Brackenridge’s novel and its publication and editorial histories thus work in concert to effect settler colonialism and a nationally palatable literature.

AB - Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s sevenvolume novel Modern Chivalry comments on and satirizes the people and politics of the early Republic. In the narrative, Indigenous characters are largely absent, yet the novel insists on the idea of their former presence. Imagined Indigenous absence in the text serves to help frontier settlers seek integration into a national whole and avoid feeling subjugated by Philadelphia’s political elites. A close analysis of the novel reveals a western perspective that aimed to colonize without being colonized. Modern Chivalry’s publication history echoes the West’s hopes to integrate into the expansionist nation, and specific deletions from later editions of the text further erase even the idea of an Indigenous presence on the frontier. Brackenridge’s novel and its publication and editorial histories thus work in concert to effect settler colonialism and a nationally palatable literature.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85179113211&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1353/eam.2023.a912122

DO - 10.1353/eam.2023.a912122

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85179113211

VL - 21

SP - 600

EP - 628

JO - Early American Studies

JF - Early American Studies

SN - 1543-4273

IS - 4

ER -