| This study examines the many ways in which the intellectual conceptions, cultural beliefs and myths about America became transformed during the period 1780-1830.; Thirty travel journals written by Europeans during the period are examined for the means by which they conveyed an image of America back to Europe. The significance of these journals is assessed in terms of their influence over the development of the public sphere in Europe. The nascent European public sphere assisted the process by which modern economic and social systems were introduced as a replacement for monarchical and absolutist forms of governance.; The findings are rich and varied, as much evidence of America appears in the European iconography of the period. Further, issues of aesthetics, land and open space became intertwined with the idealization of America, profoundly transforming its image in the eyes of Europe from earlier characterizations as a degenerate wilderness of inferior fauna to that of a spacious, dynamic frontier from which Europe could be born anew through the redemptive qualities of the blank slate that America represented in her culture, institutions and physical geography. |
