Romancing the Empire: The Embodiment of American Masculinity in the Popular Historical Novel of the 1890s

In this article the author argues that swashbuckling romances about knights errant offer a cognitive and libidinal map of US geopolitics during the shift from continental conquest to overseas empire. By looking back with nostalgia at a lost wholeness, they create fanciful realms on which to project contemporary desires for unlimited global expansion. More than neat political allegories that transpose international conflict into chivalric heroism, the novels refigure the relation between masculinity and nationality in a changing international context.