Abstract

Early nineteenth-century Americans, particularly during the Jacksonian Era, viewed corporations with caution since they were often associated with a dangerous centralization of power, feudal privilege, and even the threat of conspiracy. In The Bravo (1831), James Fenimore Cooper makes the protagonist of his tale such a “soulless corporation”. Set in the eighteenth century, it tells the story of the government of Venice, which has turned from a model republic into a corrupted oligarchy. This article maintains that Cooper’s novel thereby draws attention to the cultural anxieties surrounding the emergence of the private corporation aggregate in the United States and, by analyzing Cooper’s narrative strategy, points out the special challenges of narrating corporations: how their collective nature requires Cooper to find ways of representing corporate agency beyond embodiment in individual characters.

摘要

19 世纪早期的美国人，尤其是杰克逊时代的美国人，对公司持谨慎态度，因为它们经常与危险的权力集中、封建特权甚至阴谋威胁联系在一起。在布拉沃（1831 年），詹姆斯·费尼莫尔·库珀（James Fenimore Cooper）将他的故事的主人公变成了这样一个“没有灵魂的公司”。它以十八世纪为背景，讲述了威尼斯政府从模范共和国变成腐败寡头的故事。本文认为，库珀的小说由此引起了人们对围绕美国私营企业集团出现的文化焦虑的关注，并通过分析库珀的叙事策略，指出了叙事企业的特殊挑战：它们的集体性如何要求库珀发现代表公司代理的方式超越了个人角色的体现。