Gothic roots: Brockden Brown's Wieland, American identity, and American literature

Autores

  • Renata R. Mautner Wasserman Wayne State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2012n62p197

Resumo

 

 

Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland (1798), one of the first novels by an American author set in the newly formed United States, and dealing with American topics, is generally classed as a “Gothic” novel and read as exploring issues of national identity. The Gothic form, popular in English literature, where it gave sensationalistic treatment to matters of gender, class, national identity and religious affiliation, proved adaptable to conditions overseas. Wieland, however, is less sanguine about the success of the nation-building and independence-achieving enterprise than other, later, novels of American national identity.

Biografia do Autor

Renata R. Mautner Wasserman, Wayne State University

Renata R. Mautner Wasserman is Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at Wayne State University, specialising in nineteenth-century literature of Brazil and the US, particularly questions of cultural identity. She is the author of Central at the Margin: Five Brazilian Women Writers (2007) and Exotic Nations: Literature and Cultural Identity in Brazil and The United States; 1830- 1930 (1994; MLA Scaglione Prize), as well as numerous articles on American, English, French, and Brazilian literatures and their interrelations. She is now working on a monograph on finance and other economic matters as they are treated in fiction.

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Publicado

2012-11-06

Edição

Seção

The Gothic in New Landscapes