<p> This thesis recontextualizes the politics of Charles Brockden Brown's gothic novels in terms of the literary development of Gothicism (Friedrich Schiller) and Romanticism (Friedrich Schlegel) in Germany. This recontextualization highlights the ways in which Brown's work is participating in a transatlantic conversation about the relation of epistemology and politics in art, while underscoring how Brown's use of the gothic addresses the vital issues of grounding democratic politics in the early republic. The argument is that between his earliest extant gothic novel and his later gothic novels Brown uses Schiller's model of the gothic tale and its appeal to methodologies of epistemological verification to support democratic politics. However, in the later novels, he disregards method and uses the state of uncertainty to articulate radical subjectivity as the basis of democratic politics—<i>pace</i> Schlegel's defense of democracy.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:1527344 |
| Date | 08 April 2014 |
| Creators | Smith, Dorin |
| Publisher | California State University, Long Beach |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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