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THE HAUNTED FRONTIER:
TROUBLING GOTHIC CONVENTIONS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY
LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAN WEST
by
Wendy Anne Witherspoon
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)
December 2007
Copyright 2007 Wendy Anne Witherspoon
Object Description
| Title | The haunted frontier: troubling gothic conventions in nineteenth-century literature of the American west |
| Author | Witherspoon, Wendy Anne |
| Author email | withersp@usc.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | English |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2007-10-05 |
| Date submitted | 2007 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2007-11-12 |
| Advisor (committee chair) |
Russett, Margaret Handley, William |
| Advisor (committee member) | Halttunen, Karen |
| Abstract | The gothic genre has always been tied to empire-building, flourishing, as it does, in two distinctly imperialist moments: late eighteenth-century Britain and nineteenth-century America. "The Haunted Frontier" argues that liminal political spaces of contact coveted by nations with appetites for expansion -- "frontiers" -- must be considered a central feature of the gothic genre. The converse is also true: gothic conventions are mobilized both strategically and inadvertently in frontier literature, producing an effect that generally undermines ideological promotions of empire building and, more specifically, unsettles particular mythological constructions of the American frontier as a site of rational progress.; The study begins by enunciating the significance of the frontier in the paradigmatic British gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, and Charlotte Brontë, arguing that the frontier settings of parts of these texts construct national stability in opposition to foreign "horrors." "The Haunted Frontier" then directs the American gothic genre toward a trans-national and trans-regional re-conceptualization wherein the ideological space of the frontier becomes a central site of generic mutation. To articulate the contours of the frontier gothic as a genre, this study draws on a wide range of literary representations of the nineteenth-century American West, including Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker (1800), mid-nineteenth century anti-polygamy novels, and Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona (1884). Gothic form as well as gothic topoi such as the uncanny and contamination operate in these novels to trouble some of the texts' ideological claims for Anglo-American cultural legitimacy in contested regions.; "The Haunted Frontier" concludes by showing the persistence of the frontier gothic in contemporary representations of the American West. Extending the work of Giorgio Agamben, this study reveals that gothic motifs in the Home Box Office series Deadwood (2004-2006) suggest the intrinsic violence of law. Moreover, neither the frontier nor the gothic genre has vanished, but both have become central to understanding our postmodern lives; frontier gothic, then, is no longer the generic exception, but the rule. |
| Keyword | American literature; American history; American criticism; frontier life; pioneer life; gothic revival; United States; British gothic novel |
| Geographic subject (country) | USA |
| Coverage date | circa 1800/1900 |
| Coverage era | nineteenth century |
| 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 |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m919 |
| Rights | Witherspoon, Wendy Anne |
| 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-Witherspoon-20071112 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume32/etd-Witherspoon-20071112.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Full text | THE HAUNTED FRONTIER: TROUBLING GOTHIC CONVENTIONS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE OF THE AMERICAN WEST by Wendy Anne Witherspoon A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH) December 2007 Copyright 2007 Wendy Anne Witherspoon |
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