This book is an account of the ways the promise and threat of political revolution has informed historical novels from Walter Scott to the near present. Building off of the Marxist scholarly tradition of Georg Lukacs and Frederic Jameson, this book emphasizes the transformation of literary conventions to adapt to changing historical contexts.

Approximately fifty historical novels dealing with the American Revolution were published in the United States in the single ten-year period from 1896 to 1906. Benjamin Lawson critically examines the narrative strategies employed in these many novels, the ways in which fiction is made to serve the purpose of vivifying national history. The British conventions of the historical romance in one sense seem to preclude radical declarations of literary independence even in books purportedly about a war against Britain. Working within the formula, these many writers nonetheless created fictional plots which parallel and reflect the enveloping concerns of the War for Independence. Just as the war was sometimes viewed as an Anglo-American family squabble, these metaphorical narratives depict familial and love interests.

"In America's Imagined Revolution, Tomos Wallbank-Hughes explores late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novels about Reconstruction in the American South, identifying a subgenre of the historical novel dedicated to narrating Reconstruction as revolutionary history. Operating at the margins of political and historical fiction, the writers studied here excavate generic and temporal registers in the historical novel that enable them to imagine revolution in ways that eschew narratives of transition designed to describe the bourgeois-democratic nation-state to the exclusion of plantation societies. Despite being guided in recent years by critical paradigms focused on recovering neglected moments, spaces, and voices, literary historians have struggled to fit Reconstruction's revolutionary upheavals into their transformed narratives of the long nineteenth century. This book makes the case for the novel form as a vital source in reconstructing the historical consciousness of Reconstruction as a revolutionary experience. Arguing that the historical novel of Reconstruction gains formal coherence from the conscious attempt to theorize Reconstruction as revolution-and revolution as an anachronous experience-the book offers the first formal and historical account presenting novels about the Reconstruction period as constitutive of a coherent, if evanescent, aesthetic genre. By analyzing works by George Washington Cable, Albion Tourgée, Frances Harper, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Charles Chesnutt, among others, Wallbank-Hughes details how these authors experimented with narrative forms and subverted the epic conventions of the historical novel to reimagine the period's historiographical significance. By recovering a literary genre and intellectual tradition through their complex forms of time-consciousness, America's Imagined Revolution argues that these novels provide a window onto the literary culture of the South's long nineteenth century in which the region became a terrain for interpreting that most un-American of phenomena: revolution. Taking seriously literary attempts to decipher revolutionary change amid the postbellum South's retrenched regimes of race and class oppression, therefore, enables a reexamination of Reconstruction's pull on the contemporary imagination, encouraging us to think anew about the cultural afterlives of slavery in relation to the idea of revolution"--

This book is an account of the ways the promise and threat of political revolution has informed historical novels from Walter Scott to the near present. Building off of the Marxist scholarly tradition of Georg Lukacs and Frederic Jameson, this book emphasizes the transformation of literary conventions to adapt to changing historical contexts.

This eBook has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. During one return home, Sir Percy tells the story of André Vallon, a young Jacobin, to the Prince of Wales. André, wishing to revenge himself on a despotic seigneur, uses the Jacobins' rise to force the seigneur's daughter to marry him. Once wed, they come to love each other, only to have the old seigneur denounce André in an attempt to free his daughter.

""Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution"" is a compelling historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, renowned for its thrilling narrative and vivid depiction of the tumultuous era of the French Revolution. Set against the backdrop of political upheaval and social unrest, the story follows the transformation of André-Louis Moreau, a quick-witted and passionate young lawyer, as he becomes embroiled in the revolutionary fervor and the pursuit of justice. Through a series of dramatic twists and turns, André-Louis assumes the identity of the charismatic and enigmatic Scaramouche, a figure known for his theatrical flair and fearless spirit. Sabatini skillfully weaves a tale of love, betrayal, and revenge, highlighting the complexities of human nature and the enduring struggle for liberty and equality. ""Scaramouche"" stands as a classic in historical fiction, captivating readers with its timeless exploration of passion, honor, and the pursuit of personal and political freedom.