[-] Show simple item record

dc.contributor.advisorHeringman, Noaheng
dc.contributor.authorCope, Jonaseng
dc.date.issued2012eng
dc.date.submitted2012 Springeng
dc.descriptionTitle from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on August 28, 2012).eng
dc.descriptionThe entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.eng
dc.descriptionDissertation advisor: Dr. Noah Heringmaneng
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliographical references.eng
dc.descriptionVita.eng
dc.descriptionPh. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2012eng
dc.descriptionDissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Englisheng
dc.description"May 2012"eng
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation studies how late romantic British authors, writing primarily in the 1820s and 1830s, renegotiate inherited models of “character” from their high romantic predecessors. The authors in this dissertation all fear that having an identity means moral and intellectual stagnation. To have an essence is to be constituted. But at the same time, a self that is entirely conditional and arbitrary is also a source of anxiety. As a result, their texts linger in a sort of epistemological middle ground: a safe and experimental space wherein the discomforts inherent in each philosophical alternative—the self as transhistorical organism and the self as nonessential construct—can be avoided. Percy Shelley writes a poem, Alastor (1816), whose speaking “I” is meant to represent what he calls the “one mind,” a sort of transindividual consciousness of which all individual minds are said to be the “marks” or “modifications.” William Hazlitt associates the soul with an internal bias fixed at birth and visible in the human body, but not necessarily (á la Plato, Wordsworth and Coleridge) with an immaterial substance fixed in eternity. Letitia Landon creates picturesque characters who confuse and even synonymize surface and depth; her texts capitalize on the contradictions inherent in both personal and fictional subjectivities. Mary Shelley is Blakean and Hegelian in her insistence that a person without psychological contraries makes no moral and spiritual progress. All these authors thrive on the psychological climate or “mood” wherein their texts emerge, one marked by the systematic fragmentation of identity, the incipient dissolution of the idea of character. Their “aesthetic…insist[s] on the difficulty of recognizing…nondemonstrable identities.”eng
dc.format.extentiv, 193 pageseng
dc.identifier.oclc872566011eng
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10355/14984
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.32469/10355/14984eng
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.publisherUniversity of Missouri--Columbiaeng
dc.relation.ispartofcommunityUniversity of Missouri--Columbia. Graduate School. Theses and Dissertationseng
dc.subjectromantic literatureeng
dc.subjecthuman subjecteng
dc.subjectepistemological discussioneng
dc.subjectcultural paradigmeng
dc.titleThe dissolution of character in late romantic British literature, 1816-1837eng
dc.typeThesiseng
thesis.degree.disciplineEnglish (MU)eng
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Missouri--Columbiaeng
thesis.degree.levelDoctoraleng
thesis.degree.namePh. D.eng


Files in this item

[PDF]
[PDF]
[PDF]

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

[-] Show simple item record