My dissertation concentrates on Americans writing at home and abroad in the inter-war period and contextualizes their expatriation with reference to debates between modernist critics over the nature and substance of the American literary tradition. I clarify the definitions of terms like "exile," "emigrant," and "expatriate" central to my analysis but muddied by years of misuse. I do so with reference to coercion, a concept which I develop in accordance with recent work in the philosophy of action. At the same time I make the case for a realist, causalist hermeneutics. Next I explore the aesthetic corollary to my argument with reference to the fiction, autobiography, and literary criticism of Gertrude Stein. I argue that Stein's decision to leave America must be viewed as uncoerced, and as therefore indicative of her emigration to France. Viewed as an emigrant, and not as an exile or expatriate, Stein can be shown to manifest tendencies in her work (towards subjectivity, abstraction, and retrospection) which reflect her dissociation from, rather than ongoing connection to, America. Lastly, I look closely at the work of Van Wyck Brooks and Harold Stearns, two modernist literary and culture critics whose writings on expatriation demonstrably influenced generations of subsequent biographers and intellectual historians. Steams and Brooks can be counted among the most articulate and vociferous proponents of literary change in America, and can be situated at the poles of a vigorous debate within the literary community of their day over whether American letters were better served from within or without the United States. I contrast Brooks' civic humanism with Steams' rugged individualism and identify in the debate over expatriation a powerful analogue to ongoing debates in literary and cultural critical circles referred to as "the culture wars."
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.35022 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Muller, Adam Patrick Dooley. |
| Contributors | Livingston, Paisley (advisor) |
| 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 | alephsysno: 001617711, proquestno: NQ44525, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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