ABSTRACT
Happiness can seem a problematic value on which to found a nation. Jefferson’s enlightened draft of the Declaration of Independence could read as a permit for self-centred materialism, validating a socially irresponsible pursuit of pleasure rather than placing compassion and altruism at the heart of just governance. Yet, if the pursuit of happiness is an inherent and inalienable right for all men, and I assume that ‘men’ here is used generically, how might it be undertaken in a socially and spiritually responsible fashion? Literary texts provide an excellent forum for considering the complex issues that arise as one contemplates the tensions inherent in the radical but compromised idealism of the founding fathers and the subsequent political, social and cultural history of the United States of America. Literary texts have the resources to examine and negotiate the impossible balance between the claims of the individual and of the populace with a sensitivity and subtlety not available to other forms of discourse.
