영국인이 본 미국, 미국이 본 영국인: 나이아가라 여행 에서의 편견 이슈와 포용의 아메리카니즘

Englishmen in America: Prejudice Issue and Tolerant Americanism in A Trip to Niagara

William Dunlap’s A Trip to Niagara (1828) dramatizes the process of curing British tourists’ prejudice against America. The process evolves along with their long journey, which begins from Lower Manhattan, New York, through the Hudson River and the Erie Canal, to Niagara Falls. In this play, Dunlap attempts an alternative patriotic narrative, which is distinguished from the confrontational composition of Anglo-American relations, a theme customarily frequented and exhausted by contemporary American mainstream melodramas. Both English man John Bull, who runs a strategy to cure the prejudice, and Yankee character Jonathan acted by him, have a meta identity cross-referencing Englishness and Americanness, which serves as a device to induce an interactive message that encourages mutual understanding and tolerance of both sides. Experimenting with these dramatic design and narrative, Dunlap presents the need for the United States to maintain an advanced attitude from the past bias and one-sided view in reestablishing relations with the outside world. This necessity converges to a broader awareness of ‘tolerant Americanism’ based on mutual understanding and acceptance.