Memory's Nation
The Place of Plymouth Rock
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
Long celebrated as a symbol of the country’s origins, Plymouth Rock no longer receives much national attention. In fact, historians now generally agree that the Pilgrims' storied landing on the Rock never actually took place — the tradition having emerged more than a century after the arrival of the Mayflower.
In Memory’s Nation, however, John Seelye is not interested in the factual truth of the landing. He argues that what truly gives Plymouth Rock its significance is more than two centuries of oratorical, literary, and artistic celebrations of the Pilgrims' arrival. Seelye traces how different political, religious, and social groups used the image of the Rock on behalf of their own specific causes and ideologies. Drawing on a wealth of speeches, paintings, and popular illustrations, he shows how Plymouth Rock changed in meaning over the years, beginning as a symbol of freedom evoked in patriotic sermons at the start of the Revolution and eventually becoming an icon of exclusion during the 1920s.
Originally published in 1998.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
You don't hear much about Plymouth Rock anymore, but throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th, it was a major icon of American patriotism. Seelye, a professor of American literature at the University of Florida, traces the history of the Rock--said to be where the Pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth, Mass., in 1620--from when it was first used for political purposes in the years before the American Revolution to 1920, by which time it had begun to lose its symbolic role to the Statue of Liberty as Americans shifted their emotional identity from the Founding Fathers to later immigrants. He says flatly that the Plymouth Rock legend was a myth, but charts how the myth evolved over the years--in paintings, literature and public speeches--and how various political and social movements (especially abolition) made use of it. The book is rich, even lavish, in its detail and Seelye's sometimes antic curiosity allows him to touch on subjects that range from early New England patriotic iconography (e.g., the Liberty Pole) to the career of Daniel Webster, to the rivalry between Plymouth and Provincetown over Pilgrim bragging rights, to how the Rock itself has been displayed over the centuries. The unifying thread is Seelye's use of the annual speeches that for the better part of the 19th century were delivered on Forefather's Day at Plymouth or at meetings of the New England Society in such places as New Orleans or Brooklyn. The speeches can be heavy reading but are buoyed by Seelye's imagination and insight. Photos.
