Ideas for the intellect and emotions for the heart: The literary dimensions of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
Publication Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
3-2022
Abstract
Alexis de Tocqueville’s lifelong friend and companion Gustave de Beaumont produced a literary work based on their visit to the United States. Beaumont’s 1835 novel Marie, ou l’Esclavage aux Etats Unis, explored themes of race, manners, and equality in American society. Although Democracy in America is not a work of literature per se, it does contain a remarkable number of literary vignettes that give the work a distinctively literary quality. As Christine Dunn Henderson argues in this chapter, Tocqueville’s literary portraiture is a consistent rhetorical device throughout the book. His recourse to literary vignettes as a way of illustrating dimensions of race, religion, and American manners demonstrates the evocative power of literature to convey moral lessons by appealing to emotions rather than reason. In this regard, Tocqueville’s rhetorical strategy of sympathy and imaginative identification is reminiscent of Adam Smith’s use of vignettes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
Keywords
Gustave de Beaumont, Marie, ou l’Esclavage aux Etats Unis, politics and literature, race, gender, Native Americans, religion, American frontier, Adam Smith, imaginative identification
Discipline
Philosophy
Research Areas
Humanities
Publication
Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America
Editor
Richard Boyd
First Page
253
Last Page
277
ISBN
9781316995761
Identifier
10.1017/9781316995761.011
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
City or Country
Cambridge
Citation
HENDERSON, Christine Rodman. (2022). Ideas for the intellect and emotions for the heart: The literary dimensions of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. In Cambridge Companion to Democracy in America (pp. 253-277). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3586
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316995761.011