![]() Her book, perforce, has something of a debunking character, for she (and we) begin with what the Declaration has come to mean for us, and she attempts to show how foreign such a perspective is to what the document eigentlich was. She seeks to tell the story not of the Declaration's sources and ideas, but of its "development," of how it came to be produced within the political context of the Second Continental Congress and the events of 1776, of the function of the Declaration in that context, a function, she maintains, very different from its current role in American political life as a kind of "American Scripture." More importantly, she has a different subject matter: most of the earlier studies "have examined the Declaration for the political ideas it expressed, and then jumped from its text to the more systematic treatises of eighteenth century writers" (xvi). But most of that was "antiquarian, dated, downright wrong on critical points, or too specialized for undergraduates" (p. ![]() ![]() ![]() $27.50.)Īgainst her "better judgement," Professor Maier has added yet one more book to the large number of recent (post-1976) studies of the Declaration of Independence: "There's already too much written on the subject" (p. ![]()
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