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Stony Brook University SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... Romantic Relays: The Epistolary Condition of Imagination in Coleridge, Byron, and Poe A Dissertation Presented by Lauren Neefe to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Stony Brook University December 2013 Copyright by Lauren Neefe 2013 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Lauren Neefe We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Susan Scheckel, Associate Professor, English Dissertation Advisor Peter J. Manning, Professor, English Dissertation Advisor Eric Haralson, Associate Professor, English Chairperson of Defense Kevis Goodman, Associate Professor, English, University of California, Berkeley Meredith McGill, Associate Professor, English, Rutgers University This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation Romantic Relays: The Epistolary Condition of Imagination in Coleridge, Byron, and Poe by Lauren Neefe Doctor of Philosophy in English Stony Brook University 2013 The dissertation follows the survival of letters in literature in the early nineteenth century, after the popularity of overtly epistolary genres dramatically declined. It posits an “epistolary condition,” referring to the combination of tradition (rhetorical, literary) and practice (material, structural) that shapes the Romantic text and the author’s emergence in print. A historically specific tension between the letter, a genre defined by formal characteristics, and letters, a proto-medium of communication, the epistolary condition points to an underdeveloped counternarrative to that of Romantic genius and authorship. Each of three chapters analyzes a genre-defining work of Romanticism for the varied presentation of the self as the text serializes over time. Coleridge’s conversation lyrics, Byron’s first verse romance, and Poe’s ratiocinative tales about C. Auguste Dupin each advance the epistolary tradition in the interplay of print and manuscript, while the writer’s correspondence mediates the production of each text and its author. The “apostrophic relay” of address in Coleridge’s series of poems introduces the idiom of the epistolary condition in the context of a historically shifting sense of communication. The chapter on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage reframes Byron’s notorious “egotism” as a heroic relay of intersubjective encounters. Poe’s Dupin tales are shown to play out a discursive relay of authorial and editorial modes under the constraints of American reprint culture. In addition to developing original interpretations of high canonical works, the dissertation advances a number of active conversations in the discipline. It shifts the ground of scholarly engagement with the epistolary from the discourses of genre and the archive to that of media and mediation. In so doing, it joins other attempts to nuance the prevailing treatment of print culture as the determining medium of the early nineteenth century. Finally, it models a practice of “surface reading,” one recent answer to symptomatic reading, and prioritizes the significance of the epistolary condition to the groundbreaking theory of “lyric reading.” iii For my parents, every one iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................... vi Introduction Hidden in Plain Sight: Relay and the Epistolary Condition of Romantic Imagination .............1 The Epistolary Condition...............................................................................................5 Letter Is to Letters…....................................................................................................11 …As Genre Is to Medium............................................................................................16 Chapter 1 The Apostrophic Relay: Purloining the Lyric I of Coleridge’s Conversation Poems .............21 O Edmund!: The Dejection Ode’s Intersubjective Excess ..........................................31 “Becalm’d” Vehicles and “Creeking” Joints: Relay as Communication.....................41 Chapter 2 Byron’s Fytting Medium: The Pilgrimage in Letters..............................................................57 The Epistolarity of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage .........................................................61 Present <at the Time>: Citing the Relay......................................................................72 The Fytting Medium of Desire ....................................................................................82 Chapter 3 Neither Fate nor Fortune: Tactical Relay, the Dupin Tales, and the Phases of Poe’s Mind .............................................91 In the Squeeze: The Dupin Sequence and Opportunistic Agency ...............................94 Fits, or Starts: Breaking Forth as Relay.....................................................................106 The Special Distinction of “Marie Rogêt”.................................................................112 Conclusion Lyric Reading x Epistolary Reading and Poe’s Autography.................................................120 Works Cited ...........................................................................................................................128 v Acknowledgments Thank you thank you thank you, each and all, too numerous to remember or to name. A few nevertheless require what public recognition this convention affords. My committee members—Peter Manning, Susan Scheckel, Eric Haralson, Kevis Goodman, Meredith McGill—have patience, dedication, and faith beyond measure, and the mark of each is evident in this dissertation’s most successful moments and insights. Lisa Gitelman served as an honorary outside reader without any advantage to herself that I could see, for which I hold her in highest esteem. I could not have arrived at the “epistolary condition” without the confidence of her testing and provocation. I am grateful to Paul Erickson and the American Antiquarian Society for the rewards of the 2009 Summer Seminar in the History of the Book in America, which introduced me to Meredith and Lisa, which in turn gave traction to the slipperiness of my epistolary ambitions and intuitions. Other Stony Brook faculty members have contributed to the success of this project to date: Ben Robinson led the poetics, form, and genre list for my general exam and has been a consistent source of encouragement and sound counsel. Celia Marshik was a model graduate program director while I was applying for grants and fellowships; Jeffrey Santa Ana is a marvel of equanimity in the face of the academy’s juggernaut. Rowan Ricardo Phillips taught the graduate course for which I wrote the paper that launched this project. Thanks are due a few of the administrators who have done far more than make the bureaucracy of the graduate student’s life less painful and more fun. The education of Lauren Neefe is in equal measure owing to the wiles and wisdom of these women: Janet Meckley, Margaret Hanley, Ann Berrios, and ever Barbara Byrne. E. Ann Kaplan of the Humanities Institute and the School of Journalism awarded me assistantships that supported the early stages of my dissertation. A Mellon Dissertation Seminar in the Humanities supported a summer of framing and writing. An NeMLA travel grant, a Stony Brook Graduate School Faculty/Staff Dissertation Award, and the Graduate Student Organization’s Distinguished Travel Award funded research and conference attendance that advanced the enterprise. David McClay and Rachel Beattie were deft guides through the Murray Archive in the National Library of Scotland; Virginia Murray was most accommodating during my research visit to 50 Albemarle Street. The librarians in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia did not blink at my questions about the provenance of some of the archive’s Poe materials. DailyCandy sustained me with gainful, fun employment throughout. And several generations of graduate students have held my hand while I wrung the other so as to draw the writing out as long as possible. I have looked you in the eye and thanked you— and I hope returned the favor in kind—but here’s looking at you, Lauren Rosenblum, in a class by yourself, followed closely by Yohei Igarashi, Alina Romo, Bridget McFarland, Omar Miranda, Carmen Faye Mathes, Naomi Edwards, Derek McGrath, Patrina Jones, Matt Lorenz, Kriszta Sajber, Lindsay Welsch, and Deb Hauser. Nicole LaCoursiere, Audrey Fox, Rachel Tutera, and Mimi Lester know how to cheer a girl and her pit bull on. Then before and above all: Socks. One does not write a dissertation without Socks. vi Introduction Hidden in Plain Sight: Relay and the Epistolary Condition of Romantic Imagination Foucault begins “What Is an Author?” by declaring the arrival of the author to be “the privileged moment of individualization in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy, and the sciences” (101). In English literary history, a crucial moment in this process of individualization is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s concise definition of the imagination, written in 1815 to conclude
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