Date of Completion
12-18-2015
Embargo Period
12-14-2025
Keywords
Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Nationalism, Revolution, Cosmology, Astronomy
Major Advisor
Sharon M. Harris
Associate Advisor
Cathy J. Schlund-Vials
Associate Advisor
Anna Mae Duane
Field of Study
English
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Open Access
Open Access
Abstract
“American Cosmologies” brings together the study of nineteenth-century print culture and the study of metaphor by examining how revolutionary political groups distributed, circulated, and serialized cosmological language in order to materialize political action. Challenging cultural histories that present revolutionary ideals as part of a genuinely universal discourse, this project demonstrates that writers and political actors throughout the nineteenth century deployed the language of cosmic movement – of celestial revolution as political revolution, for instance – as a means of legitimizing and materializing acts of political violence. In attributing political transformation to cosmic forces, writers and revolutionaries rendered in print their belief in a naturalistic, inevitable politics even as the political projects they articulated were contingent and variable. By engaging multiple cosmic-political metaphors, “American Cosmologies” challenges commonplaces about the presumed universality of liberal revolutionary ideals. This project suggests that revolutionary metaphors reveal a history of contradictory, even violent attempts to deploy literature as a means of materializing political power and of territorializing the “universal.”
Recommended Citation
Fraser, Gordon D., "American Cosmologies: Race and Revolution in the Nineteenth Century" (2015). Doctoral Dissertations. 1005.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/dissertations/1005