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THE REFORMATION OF THE WORLD:
HISTORY, REVELATION, AND REFORM IN THE
ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN ROMANCE
by
Joel Matthew Gordon
________________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)
December 2010
Copyright 2010 Joel Matthew Gordon
Object Description
| Title | The reformation of the world: history, revelation, and reform in the antebellum American romance |
| Author | Gordon, Joel Matthew |
| Author email | joelgord@usc.edu; joel_gordon@yahoo.com |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | English |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date submitted | 2010 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2010-11-17 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Kemp, Anthony |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Gustafson, Thomas Briggs, Sheila |
| Abstract | The Reformation of the World examines the literature of an age that Lawrence Buell has called America’s “history-conscious period,” which stretched from the appearance of Walter Scott’s Waverly in 1817 to the decade before the Civil War. This period, which saw the first commemorations of the Revolutionary War generation, widespread resistance to Native American removal, and the growing push toward abolitionism by religious partisans in the North, not only built memorials, such as the one at Bunker Hill, but also revisited the early histories of the nation to condemn the first crimes perpetrated by the first settlers. Between the 1820s and the 1850s, three major trends merged in American culture: the self-conscious memorialization of these two "founding" generations, the Puritan and the Revolutionary; an intra-Congregationalist reformation that led to the establishment of a Unitarian church and, later, to the offshoot of the Transcendentalists; and the massive popularity of the Waverly romance, realistic narratives that combined historically accurate events, such as the Pequod War or the Battle of Bunker Hill, and wholly fictionalized characters.; This study looks at three distinct types of historiography in the works of America’s antebellum historical romancers: the non-sectarian lament for broken national unity written by Scott’s first American heir, James Fenimore Cooper; the liberal-Unitarian revisionism of the first authors to turn away from New England’s Orthodox Calvinist traditions, such as Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Eliza Buckminster Lee, and Lydia Maria Child; and the second-generation schism from Unitarianism that eventually went by the name of Transcendentalism, best represented (though not wholly endorsed) in the romances and tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne. These romances fall into the same form as those histories written by the first “history-conscious” age of America, the second- and third-generation of Puritan settlers.; On the one hand, conservative authors such as Cooper saw a falling away from earlier perfection into disunity and declension. On the other hand, liberal authors such as Sedgwick saw a move toward perfection, as America repented for its older Calvinist sins. In either of these historiographical models, the dispute over American history becomes a dispute over revelation that underlies all post-reformation religious movements. |
| Keyword | historical romance; reform; Unitarianism; transcendentalism; James Fenimore Cooper; Catharine Maria Sedgwick; Eliza Buckminster Lee; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Orestes Brownson; Waverly romance; domestic novel |
| Geographic subject (country) | USA |
| Coverage date | 1820/1859 |
| Coverage era | Antebellum |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m3534 |
| Rights | Gordon, Joel Matthew |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-Gordon-4176 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume29/etd-Gordon-4176.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | THE REFORMATION OF THE WORLD: HISTORY, REVELATION, AND REFORM IN THE ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN ROMANCE by Joel Matthew Gordon ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH) December 2010 Copyright 2010 Joel Matthew Gordon |
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