Between habits of the heart and copulation of clichés: Some popular American stories, mores and shibboleths
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Date
2012
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
From the very beginning, all manner of ideas, concepts and conceits have been advanced to explain
America and Americans – as much to themselves as to others. The paper presents a historical-
literary compilation of popular notions of ‘Americanness’ in the guise of random de Tocquevillian
observations in general circulation. This is to provoke the question about the degree to
which this kind of pervasive discourse may reflect the so-called habits of the heart, as against how
at a certain point it may lapse into a Nabokovian copulation of clichés.
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Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 47.2-3 (2012), pp. 93-114