A Republic in Time: Temporality and Social Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America
Thomas M. Allen
Abstract
The development of the American nation has typically been interpreted in terms of its expansion through space, specifically its growth westward. This book posits time, not space, as the most significant territory of the young nation. It argues that beginning in the nineteenth century, the actual geography of the nation became less important, as Americans imagined the future as their true national territory. The book explores how transformations in the perception of time shaped American conceptions of democratic society and modern nationhood. It focuses on three ways of imagining time: the roma ... More
The development of the American nation has typically been interpreted in terms of its expansion through space, specifically its growth westward. This book posits time, not space, as the most significant territory of the young nation. It argues that beginning in the nineteenth century, the actual geography of the nation became less important, as Americans imagined the future as their true national territory. The book explores how transformations in the perception of time shaped American conceptions of democratic society and modern nationhood. It focuses on three ways of imagining time: the romantic historical time that prevailed at the outset of the nineteenth century; the geological “deep time” that arose as widely read scientific works displaced biblical chronology with a new scale of millions of years of natural history; and the technology-driven “clock time” that became central to American culture by century's end. The book analyzes cultural artifacts ranging from clocks and scientific treatises to paintings and literary narratives to show how Americans made use of these diverse ideas about time to create competing visions of American nationhood.
Keywords:
nineteenth century,
perception of time,
democratic society,
modern nationhood,
deep time,
natural history,
clock time,
artifacts
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2008 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780807831793 |
| Published to North Carolina Scholarship Online: July 2014 |
DOI:10.5149/9780807868171_allen |
