Literature, Gender and Politics in Britain during the War for America, 1770–1785

A new interdisciplinary perspective on masculine identity and politics in Britain during the American War of Independence, 1775–83.

An exploration of British culture during the American War of Independence, focusing on the formation of competing notions of masculinity. Authors discussed include Burke, Reynolds, Sheridan and Chatterton. The book will interest scholars and students of literary and political discourse in the eighteenth century.The successful performance of a particular kind of masculinity was critical to political life during the eighteenth century, when men who claimed membership of the public sphere were expected to be men of honour as well as property. By the 1770s, however, the transformative effects of commerce and the claims of politeness complicated older certainties. Robert Jones examines how the parliamentary Opposition and their literary allies responded to political pressures and the emergencies of a disastrous war by fashioning a new mode of politics based on a more flexible range of masculinities. Basing his study on close readings of Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the trials of General Burgoyne and Admiral Keppel, and the Whig appropriation of Thomas Chatterton, Jones explores how Opposition discourse risked the charge of effeminacy in order to fuse the languages of honour and sensibility.