Keeping Up Appearances: A Lacanian Perspective on American Mythmaking in Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ 'The Puritan' (1886)

Reisser, Kristopher

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Keeping Up Appearances: A Lacanian Perspective on American Mythmaking in Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ 'The Puritan' (1886) Acceso Abierto Deposited

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Date Uploaded: 04/29/2025
Date Modified: 04/29/2025

Beneath the severe bronze of Saint-Gaudens' 'The Puritan' (1886) lies a fracture in an American myth. This paper reads the statue through the Lacanian concept of the Name-of-the-Father, revealing a national fantasy subtly unraveling at its seams. What at first conveys ancestral virtue is exposed as a compensatory myth-- an Imaginary projection built atop repression. Through patronage, iconography, and psychoanalysis, this study brings to light the scaffolding of Gilded Age mythmaking.

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