Jesper Gulddal

That most hateful land : Romanticism and the birth of modern anti-Americanism

This article presents a comparative study of romantic anti-Americanism focusing on Britain, Germany and France. On the basis of the hypothesis that romanticism invented what might be called the basic vocabulary of anti-American discourse, the article presents a taxonomy of this vocabulary and points to the determining factors underlying the romantic disaffection for America and Americans. Five motifs are singled out as fundamental to romantic anti-Americanism: the lack of history and culture in the US, the crass materialism of its inhabitants, their vulgarity, their religious excesses, and the flaws of the American political system. The article closes with an interpretation of romantic anti-Americanism as a strongly self-affirming, Eurocentric discourse, which accustomed Europeans to think of Europe and America as antithetical entities, thereby paving the way for cultural constructions not only of the American ‘other’, but also of a common European identity.

Henry Fielding’s Proposals for an Internal British Passport System

Although Henry Fielding’s political writings have long generated considerable scholarly interest, his detailed proposals for an internal British passport system have so far been neglected. From the point of view of impact, this is not surprising; unlike his police reforms (Downie 114), Fielding’s reflections on the benefits of restricting the mobility of the lower classes had little immediate or longterm legislative impact. Nor is this neglect strange in purely quantitative terms; when discounting the author’s wide-ranging survey of legal precedents, the passport suggestions themselves consist of just a handful of paragraphs in the 1753 pamphlet “A Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor.” Nevertheless, these suggestions are important for an understanding of Fielding’s politics as expressed in both his social commentary and his fictional works. As I argue in this essay, they not only represent one of the earliest, comprehensive designs of a British passport regime, departing from existing eighteenth-century settlement requirements by targeting the mobility of the poor in the abstract, as something inherently undesirable and politically suspect. The passport proposals also enable us to undercover a nexus of mobility and movement control that forms a central concern in Fielding’s later writings. Finally, Fielding’s advocacy of extensive movement control compels us to reinvestigate the relationship between the political pamphlets and the novels. At first glance, this relationship seems paradoxical since the former body of writing seeks to outlaw the unrestricted mobility that provides the narrative basis for the latter. However, as I suggest by way of conclusion, the push for movement control is also present in the fictional realm in the guise of formal strategies designed to contain the protagonists’ itinerant ways. Movement control and passports are, in some respects, at odds with the dominant liberalist strand of British political thinking and have often been denounced by political philosophers as instruments of tyranny.1 In fact, the difference between the political cultures of Britain and continental Europe are rarely as apparent as in the different historical uses of the passport for the purposes of control and surveillance on either side of the English Channel. In a process beginning in the late Middle Ages and reaching its first culmination in the wake of the French Revolution, the continent as a political space was profoundly reconfigured by the introduction of increasingly restrictive passport measures that made both internal and international mobility subject to strict control (Fahrmeir 101–04; Torpey 18–20). By contrast, British governments throughout this period sought to keep the poor settled in their home parishes, yet stopped short of establishing a full movement control regime complete with internal borders, highway police, and a centralized passport administration. This legislative disparity correlates with different assumptions about mobility and personal freedom.

‘The one great Hyperpower in the Sky’: anti-Americanism in contemporary European literature

In this article, three recent works by French, English and German authors are analysed as examples of anti-Americanism in contemporary European literature. Luc Langs travel book, 11 septembre mon amour (2003), John Le Carrés spy novel, Absolute friends (2003) and Frank Schätzings apocalyptic ‘eco-thriller’ Der Schwarm (2004) were all written in response to the ongoing ‘war on terror’, and each presents a remarkably antagonistic interpretation of the United States and its role in the world today. Although the literary strategies employed in these negative representations of the US are very different in each case, the three books share a deep disgust not only with American foreign policy, invariably interpreted as a reckless, deranged bid for global hegemony, but also with American culture and society in general. This article interprets this disgust as an expression of a deep-seated, irrational Americanophobia—that is, of ‘anti-Americanism’.

Narratives of Resentment: Notes towards a Literary History of European Anti-Americanism

This essay investigates the history and internal functioning of a specifically literary form of anti-Americanism that for more than two hundred years has played a key role in the propagation of negative images of the United States. Drawing on Dickenss Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44), Duhamels Scénes de la vie future (1930), and Graham Greenes The Quiet American (1955), it analyzes three major narrative paradigms of anti-Americanism literature: the story of the disillusioned emigrant, anti-American futurology, and anti-American tribunalism. On this basis, the essay offers a discussion of fictional literature as a medium for the development and dissemination of anti-Americanism, before concluding by linking literary anti-Americanism to the quest for a common European identity.

Contrasting Visions: Perceptions of America in Henrik Ibsen's Pillars of Society

The great conversion about America that took place in European letters throughout the nineteenth century was characterized by a marked tendency towards polarization and routinely cast the New World either as a “dream” or a “nightmare” (Arendt). This polarization was due in part, especially in the first half of the century, to the relative scarcity of reliable information about the United States. Yet the main reason was that writers and intellectuals tended to approach America strictly in Eurocentric terms, perceiving this country, not in its own right, but as a foil for political and social issues within a European setting; those with a liberal outlook, for example, tended to extol America as a way of implicitly criticizing the prevailing conditions in Europe, whereas conservatives, for the opposite reason, often opted for a strongly dismissive attitude. In the absence of sustained, dispassionate enquiry, the European image of America, not least in the context of fictional literature, remained a battleground of opposing mythologies, pitting enamored accounts of American freedom and authenticity against glum visions of moral and cultural decay. Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen is not normally regarded as a major contributor to this debate about America. Indeed, Ibsen does not seem to have concerned himself much with the United States. His private correspondence contains only sporadic references to this country, even though two of his younger siblings had settled in the Midwest, and his diplomat son Sigurd was stationed at the SwedishNorwegian legation in Washington DC for three years in the late 1880s. His personal library contained none of the standard contemporary accounts of America, whether fictional or factual (Haakonsen). Most importantly, his published works tend to avoid the topic altogether. In fact, we would be justified in speaking, not simply of a lack of interest, but of an apparent lack of awareness of America on the part of Ibsen the author, were it not for a handful of scattered references in his poetic Nineteenth-Century Contexts Vol. 34, No. 4, September 2012, pp. 289–304