Description
- Abstract:
- This dissertation argues that gothic conventions in antebellum fiction revise Enlightenment categories of the individual, sympathy, and the social contract for a cultural environment made of heterogeneous, mutable, and often migratory groups. I read the fiction of Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Nathaniel Hawthorne to show how their works challenge the normativity and naturalness of these Enlightenment models by opening individuals to their environment and subjecting them to collective sources of emotion and information. Contrary to prevailing critical accounts that read the gothic as the expression of some form of national guilt, I account for the gothic's substantial appeal during the antebellum period by arguing that it prepared a culturally diverse readership to think of itself as very much part of a transatlantic world of exchange.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Brown University (2009)
Access Conditions
- Rights
- In Copyright
- Restrictions on Use
- Collection is open for research.
Citation
Silyn Roberts, Sian,
"Gothic Enlightenment: American Fiction and the Limits of Sympathy, 1789-1850"
(2008).
English Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0WS8RHX
