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To make a world: The discourse of mechanism in the early American republic.
- Format:
- Book
- Thesis/Dissertation
- Author/Creator:
- Terrell, Colleen E.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- American literature.
- Research.
- United States--Research.
- United States.
- 0323.
- 0591.
- Penn dissertations--Comparative literature and literary theory.
- Comparative literature and literary theory--Penn dissertations.
- Local Subjects:
- Penn dissertations--Comparative literature and literary theory.
- Comparative literature and literary theory--Penn dissertations.
- 0323.
- 0591.
- Physical Description:
- 227 pages
- Contained In:
- Dissertation Abstracts International 63-02A.
- System Details:
- Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- text file
- Summary:
- An early American discourse of mechanism figuratively captured both the actual work of national creation and its political paradoxes. The pervasive Enlightenment analogy between mechanisms and natural phenomena, between human mechanics and the divine Creator, enabled the making of a "new world" to be represented likewise as a rational, skillful, and harmonious process of mechanical construction. Scientific and philosophical texts, educational treatises, political letters, and material artifacts illuminate how the rhetorical strategies of such eighteenth-century writers as Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Rush, and Crevecoeur depict the process of national founding---from ordering the natural environment and educating a virtuous citizenry to drawing new instruments of government and narrating the nation's emergence---in enthusiastic mechanical terms. At the same time, this optimistic, creative discourse of mechanism correlates with longstanding theological debates about the relation of free will to determinism in a mechanistic universe, revealing the difficult and delicate balance between order and liberty in the new nation's framework. The nightmarish engines and thematic "machinations" of early national gothic narratives by Brockden Brown and Poe dramatize the problematic political implications of nation building. Characters in these works, frequently caught in the "machinations" of others while also trying to control their own experience or environment, hesitate between self-regulation and an involuntary, automatic behavior. They thus anticipate a later rhetoric of protest: amidst divisive social and political fragmentation in the mid-nineteenth century, writers such as Thoreau and Fuller associate the machine with passive obedience to the tyranny of the state, imagining nature as a space of complete free will. Tracing the changing tenor of the discourse of mechanism throughout this period illuminates not only the political and cultural engagement of its literature but also the fascinating relationship between mechanical construction and the manipulation of language: the conjunction of narrative with mechanism ultimately reveals the ways in which artisanship and authorship coincide in the realm of creation, allowing authors to escape the paradox of determinism through the very act of writing a new world into being.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory) -- University of Pennsylvania, 2002.
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-02, Section: A, page: 0599.
- Supervisor: Christopher Looby.
- Local Notes:
- School code: 0175.
- ISBN:
- 9780493578637
- Access Restriction:
- Restricted for use by site license.
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