This dissertation considers British Romantic-era literature as a critique of social contract philosophy. I argue that the dominant neo-Kantian critical framework is extraneous to many actual Romantic works and belongs more to the critics than to the texts themselves. In the first chapter, I examine Romanticism's empiricist contexts, demonstrating that such diverse seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophers as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Smith, Mandeville and Ferguson face the similar challenge of finding an ethical basis for commonality within an essentially asocial conception of human nature. Previously, the understanding of humans as sociable creatures had been so dominant that Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke were expressing a startlingly different view of human nature in their accounts of individuals forming a social contract. Anglo-Scottish critics of the social contract are influenced by social contract theory's difficulty reconciling individuals to broader ethical commitments. Hume posits sociability as a fiction for organizing a chaotic reality, and Mandeville redefines individualism and literature as social virtues, rather than vices. Yet all of the theorists considered in this chapter face the similar problem of accommodating individual needs within the greater social body. The second chapter focuses on Wordsworth's Prelude, which is arguably the most canonical English Romantic text, and a prime target of new-historicist criticism. I analyze Wordsworth's complex and evolving attitudes to Rousseau in The Prelude (1805), and also in the "Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff" (1793), The Excursion (1814), and the 1850 Prelude. While in France in the early 1790s, Wordsworth was drawn to the new idea of a social contract. His Prelude echoes Rousseau's pastoral pattern whereby social retreat motivates the idealization of nature. But when power actually reverts to nature in revolutionary France, Wordsworth rejects the social contract and turns to his private vocation as a poet. This shift has been extensively criticized by new historicist scholarship. Yet for the rest of his career, Wordsworth continued to wrestle with social contract theory's inner contradictions.In the third chapter, I study Godwin as a unique writer both of political theory and of literature, comparing his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice to Fleetwood. Instead of the usual view that Godwin had a non-Rousseauvian political phase and then a sentimental literary one, I regard these as concurrent and conflicting positions within Godwin's work, which he derives from Rousseau's and Hume's arguments that individuals must conform to society's master narratives. In Fleetwood, Rousseau features as an actual fictional character, and his friend Mr. Macneil as a thinly-disguised portrait of Hume. Godwin also criticizes the gendering of individualism, echoing Mary Wollstonecraft in his account of Fleetwood's marriage. But although critical of the inherent misogyny of a misanthropic, individualistic culture, Godwin remains more concerned with homosocial male dynamics than with women, and with individualism's weaknesses than with his own complicity therein. A complement to Fleetwood is provided by Frankenstein, which unreservedly criticizes individualism. Shelley opposes individualism by innovatively constructing her own text as a collaborative enterprise rather than an individual work. Accordingly, Frankenstein engages in an intertextual dialogue with Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and their relationships to Rousseau. Shelley suggests that Rousseau is less concerned with an idealized past or utopian future, than with the inherent conflicts of sociability, which she expresses through the figure of Frankenstein's creature. Together with his aborted female companion, this creature has become an icon of individualism's discontents, which continue to preoccupy popular culture nearly two centuries later. / La philosophie du contrat social des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles a modifié la relation entre l'individu et la société. Pendant cette période, la société est passée du précédent modèle du corps politique à un nouveau concept au moyen duquel un groupe d'individus différents s'unissent pour protéger leurs droits en établissant un contrat social. Hobbes, Locke et Rousseau ont lutté pour développer un modèle de société qui met l'individu à la première place. Des critiques empiristes de cette tradition comme Hume et Smith furent aussi influencés par l'individualisme révolutionnaire du contrat social, tout en étant plus sceptiques quant à son modèle de communauté. La perspective du contrat social a eu une influence directe sur la Révolution française, et – par extension – sur la littérature romantique anglaise.Mais le contrat social n'a pas retenu l'attention d'une tradition critique dominée par son intérêt pour l'idéalisme germanique, et par une ferme croyance dans le fait que le romantisme annulait tout contexte socio-historique. Cette étude de l'influence de la tradition du contrat social sur des textes canoniques du romantisme vise à recentrer la conscience politique du romantisme. Mon travail de recherche s'ajoute à un récent intérêt pour les contextes empiriques, il élargit les débats tout en les concentrant sur le contrat social dans plusieurs ouvrages exemplaires du romantisme. Le Prélude, de William Wordsworth, sans doute l'archétype du poème romantique, est aussi la cible de la récente nouvelle critique historiciste. Je retrace son dialogue dynamique avec les théories de Rousseau sur sa longue histoire éditoriale. Wordsworth rencontre des difficultés similaires à celle des sujets modernes aliénés de Rousseau, qui ressentent la société comme hostile aux désirs individuels. J'examine ensuite le dialogue ambivalent de William Godwin avec la philosophie du contrat social, comparant Enquiry Concerning Political Justice à Fleetwood, qui met en question les théories sociales individualistes. Dans Frankenstein, Mary Shelley critique le mythe de l'indépendance originelle dans le contrat social, s'inspirant directement de Rousseau ainsi que des références qu'y fait Mary Wollstonecraft. Ces textes romantiques, écrits une génération après Du contrat social et à la suite de la Révolution française, s'intéressent à la formation d'une société composée d'individus isolés. Deux cents ans plus tard, ce problème reste au premier plan de la théorie politique, expliquant en partie la fascination contemporaine pour les icônes romantiques, comme la nature de Wordsworth, le solitaire du romantique Godwin et la créature de Frankenstein.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.96730 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Rivlin Beenstock, Zoe |
| Contributors | Monique Morgan (Internal/Supervisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | Electronically-submitted theses. |
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