Title Information
Title
Gothic Enlightenment: American Fiction and the Limits of Sympathy, 1789-1850
Name: Personal
Name Part
Silyn Roberts, Sian
Role
Role Term: Text
creator
Origin Information
Copyright Date (encoding="w3cdtf", keyDate="yes")
2008
Physical Description
Extent
vi, 183 p.
digitalOrigin
born digital
Note
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Brown University (2009)
Name: Personal
Name Part
Armstrong, Nancy
Role
Role Term: Text
director
Name: Personal
Name Part
Gould, Philip
Role
Role Term: Text
reader
Name: Personal
Name Part
Tennenhouse, Leonard
Role
Role Term: Text
reader
Name: Corporate
Name Part
Brown University. English
Role
Role Term: Text
sponsor
Genre (aat)
theses
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.
Subject (Local)
Topic
gothic
Subject (Local)
Topic
John Locke
Subject (Local)
Topic
Scottish Enlightenment
Subject (Local)
Topic
Transatlantic
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1071476")
Topic
Population
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/1140836")
Topic
Sympathy
Subject (FAST) (authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/40818")
Name
Name Part
Locke, John
Name Part: Date
1632-1704
Record Information
Record Content Source (marcorg)
RPB
Record Creation Date (encoding="iso8601")
20091218
Language
Language Term: Code (ISO639-2B)
eng
Language Term: Text
English
Identifier: DOI
10.7301/Z0WS8RHX
Access Condition: rights statement (href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
In Copyright
Access Condition: restriction on access
Collection is open for research.
Type of Resource (primo)
dissertations