“That celestial thought”: Ethics and aesthetics in the American romance

Casey R Pratt, Purdue University

Abstract

This project examines the work of four American romance writers—Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Jacobs, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne—and demonstrates that, for each of these writers, the aesthetic features that characterize romantic narration served as an avenue into a unique brand of ethical discourse. The analysis suggests that the stylistic emphasis on “betweenness” and mystery (what Hawthorne calls “a neutral territory”) that defines romance writing enables and enacts a consideration of ethics that is similarly neutral and determinedly unclosed. Although the approach taken here draws on recent theoretical research in literature and ethics, this dissertation consistently pays close attention to the primary texts themselves as foundational sources of ethical understanding. Chapter one considers three of Poe’s “Perverse tales” and closely examines the psychological perspective presented in those stories in order to demonstrate by way of comparison that one of Poe’s finest stories, “The Cask of Amontillado,” may be fruitfully understood as a more subtle narrative exploration of the same psychological phenomenon. Chapter two shows that Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl functions as a self-conscious refusal of the language and dynamics of racial discourse. Despite Jacobs’ adamant truth claims in her introduction, Incidents is deeply marked by the style of romance fiction, which allows Jacobs to conceive of the problems of identity and ethics in universal terms. Chapter three describes the differences between Ishmael’s clear and straightforward understanding of “madness” and Melville’s more hesitant understanding of madness in order to reset longstanding critical evaluations of both Ishmael and Ahab. This chapter extends a sympathetic reading to both Ishmael and Ahab, and tries to guide readers of Moby-Dick to a more ethically challenging perspective. Chapter four argues that the passive, receptive style implicitly demanded by Hawthorne of his readers must serve as the basis for understanding both the aesthetic and ethical achievements of The Marble Faun, and assumes that this style of reading constitutes a unique ethical style of interpersonal behavior.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Flory, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American literature

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