The Bedazzler

Abstract

Abstract What did it mean for people to want to be “a Napoleon”? Many did—and the desire caused consternation around the Atlantic world. This chapter associates that question with two key nineteenth-century questions: the status of genius and the proper role of great men. How should the moral authority and social utility of “heroes” be understood or assessed? Napoleon Bonaparte—the little corporal and also the emperor—is a motivating cause for the debates that develop around these issues, both in terms of representation (the difference between forms of exemplifying narratives), content (what it means to be great), and application (how we measure their utility). The problems Napoleon embodies are not dependent on his instantiation of them, but across the nineteenth century he became their vehicle, usurping minds as he had usurped power in France. Moving through a variety of case studies—Channing, Poe, Emerson, Abbott, and Brown—the chapter charts the various US responses to these questions, particularly as they circled around Napoleon, the most famous man of the century.