Eneasz w Ameryce
Aeneas in America

Author(s): Marcin Gajek
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, Political Theory, Political Sciences, Security and defense
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: city upon a hill; New Troy; American Aeneas; Northern States; Southern States; Gnosticism; Southern Agrarians
Summary/Abstract: The figure of a ‘City upon a Hill’ (New Jerusalem) occupies a distinctive position in the system of symbolic images characterising the American republic. It provides a crucial interpretative key for the American political project. The vast literature on this subject leads many scholars to a misperception: they tend to project the Puritan mindset, typical for New England, upon the entire English colonisation in America and, while doing so, overlook the diversity of the American political tradition as well as the fundamental role played by regions in shaping a complex identity of the burgeoning American society. This paper presents an alternative and lesser-known concept of America as a New Troy and captain John Smith as an American Aeneas, which emerged in the Southern colonies soon after the establishment of Jamestown. The figure of New Troy contains a semantic field which implicates the interpretation of American political tradition in the alternative or even antithetic terms to that of New Jerusalem. The teleocratic, highly moralistic and, according to some scholars, even gnostic concept of the ‘republic of saints’ was contrasted by Southerners with the conservative vision of a nomocratic political order, sanctioned by tradition and dedicated to the preservation of the status quo. This paper argues that by discussing and contrasting both visions, we can better understand the cultural roots of specific fundamental differences in the mindsets of Americans living in different regions of the United States, both from a historical and contemporary perspective.

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