As if : Utopian desire and the imagination of history in nineteenth-century America / Jill E. S. Shashaty.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Shashaty, Jill E. S.

Contributor:

Kaplan, Amy, advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--English.

English--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--English.

English--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

vi, 209 pages ; 29 cm

Production:

2011.

Summary:

Accounts of the development of historical consciousness in nineteenth-century America have overlooked the significant role played by utopian imaginaries, particularly during the antebellum period. "As If: Utopian Desire and the Imagination of History in Nineteenth-Century America" addresses this omission with two propositions. First, I argue that in contrast to literary history's focus on Edward Bellamy's 1888 Looking Backward as the origin point for American utopian fiction, it is instead literature of the antebellum period that initiates this development in American letters. Second, in response to a critical tendency to mark history and utopianism as contradictory discourses, I demonstrate the role utopianism plays in aiding and expanding historiographical thought. Four case studies develop these assertions in the context of specific historiographical problems. Chapter One examining Cooper's The Crater reveals the pressures that new developments in the hard sciences placed on humanistic accounts of time and history. Chapter Two on Martin R. Delany's Blake confronts the inbuilt resistance of American historical narratives to the possibility of a slave-led revolution. Chapter Three focusing on Emily Dickinson's poetry speaks to the insufficiencies of Christian millennialism in providing a coherent and satisfying account of historical experience. The final chapter on Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward addresses the relationship between antebellum and turn-of-the-century utopian writing and explores the novel's struggle to represent radical historical change. In sum, these chapters demonstrate how, in the wake of the waning influence of the historical novel, utopianism offered writers a grammar for grappling with historiographical problems raised by new epistemologies (especially in hard sciences), race and revolution, shifting religious paradigms, and American imperialism. Utopian literary conventions provided ways for author to engage what I call the "subjunctive" aspects of these historiographical problems---desire, conjecture, ineffability, futurity, and loss---as the professional discipline of history became increasingly positivist and thus less capacious in its approach. In utilizing utopia as an analytic category, this project reclaims the undervalued critical lens of utopia, which like optics such as trauma and melancholy, offers an alternative approach to representing historical experience and theorizing historical expression.

Notes:

Adviser: Amy Kaplan.

Thesis (Ph.D. in English) -- University of Pennsylvania, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references.