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Anna Seward and the Many (After) Lives of Major André: Trauma, Mourning and Transatlantic Literary Legacy
- Eighteenth-Century Studies
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 48, Number 2, Winter 2015
- pp. 201-219
- 10.1353/ecs.2015.0010
- Article
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This essay traces the publication history and reception of Anna Seward’s Monody on Major André and considers its impact on Anglo-American literary history and cultural memory. By marking the deepening ideological rift between Britain and America, Seward’s Monody and the many literary works that followed it captured a feeling of conflicted loyalties by rallying both British patriotism and American sympathy. Paradoxically, by remembering André’s death collectively, these works of transatlantic literary mourning can be seen to mark both a moment of political rupture and a reunification of divided Anglo-American culture.