Laws of the land : ecomedieavlism and the politics of property in nineteenth-century transatlantic literature.
| dc.contributor.advisor | Pond, Kristen A. | |
| dc.creator | Tharp, Sarah Anne, 1991- | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-07-17T14:00:11Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-07-17T14:00:11Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2023-08 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023-08 | |
| dc.date.submitted | August 2023 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2024-07-17T14:00:11Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | American medievalism has long been explained as a phenomenon responding to the influence of British medievalism. While other scholars have demonstrated the complexities of the relationship between the two nations’ approaches to medievalism before, I argue that instead of simply borrowing medievalism or adapting medievalism, both British and American writers use medievalism to have a shared conversation. My dissertation demonstrates that medievalism was a popular discourse because it allowed the two nations, with shared histories, to have a mutually intelligible conversation about property law. Specifically, by returning to the perceived origins of property law, such as medieval hunting law and the implementation of feudalism, both British and American writers could develop their ideas about the relationship between property law and national identity. To demonstrate the flexibility of medievalism and the continuity of these ideas, I examine three pairs of authors across three genres: the Gothic novels of William Godwin and Charles Brockden Brown; the historical romances of Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper; and the time travel novels of William Morris and Mark Twain. Furthermore, I connect all three pairings through an analysis of one of the oddest features of American medievalism, the medievalizing of Indigenous characters, to demonstrate that the historiographical discourse about the Middle Ages and about land policy (hunting and agriculture) plays a major role in providing continuity across a highly flexible discourse. | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | ||
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/2104/12790 | |
| dc.language.iso | English | |
| dc.rights.accessrights | No access – contact librarywebmaster@baylor.edu | |
| dc.title | Laws of the land : ecomedieavlism and the politics of property in nineteenth-century transatlantic literature. | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | text | |
| local.embargo.lift | 2028-08-01 | |
| local.embargo.terms | 2028-08-01 | |
| thesis.degree.department | Baylor University. Dept. of English. | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | Baylor University | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. | |
| thesis.degree.program | English | |
| thesis.degree.school | Baylor University |
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