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DAVIS, ALLISON COOPER, Ph.D. Ponder and Believe: Interpretive Experiments in Victorian Literary Fantasies. (2009) Directed by Dr

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DAVIS, ALLISON COOPER, Ph.D. Ponder and Believe: Interpretive Experiments in Victorian Literary Fantasies. (2009) Directed by Dr DAVIS, ALLISON COOPER, Ph.D. Ponder and Believe: Interpretive Experiments in Victorian Literary Fantasies. (2009) Directed by Dr. Mary Ellis Gibson. 218 pp. This dissertation examines experimental Victorian fantasy novels in order to provide an alternate history for the Victorian era, one traditionally associated with the realist novel. Texts are discussed using fantasy theory, reader-response criticism, and rhetorical philosophy in order to demonstrate how literary belief influences the moral project of experimental Victorian novelists. First, a review of literature introduces the reader to the major ideas and problems of fantasy texts. Then, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is used to exemplify the relationship between the fantastic author and her reader. The first few chapters, then, explain the theory of reading fantasy that will be examined in the rest of the project. The following three chapters discuss the experimental nature of Sara Coleridge’s Phantasmion: Prince of Palmland (1837); George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858); and Jean Ingelow’s Mopsa, the Fairy (1869). The focus is on how these authors manipulated readers’ expectations for a fairy tale in order to use the trope of childlike wonder as a reading strategy that would encourage interpretive inquiry about the unity of the fantastic and the material. The primary thesis is that these authors use theories about literary belief (derived from Romantic influences) to structure their texts and to guide readers in how to read experimental fantasy work. The dissertation concludes with a chapter that explains how critics could understand further the intersection of fantasy and realism during the nineteenth century and could begin to view them as part of a unified Victorian tradition rather than as incommensurable modes. PONDER AND BELIEVE: INTERPRETIVE EXPERIMENTS IN VICTORIAN LITERARY FANTASIES by Allison Cooper Davis A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2009 Approved by ______________________________ Committee Chair © 2009 Allison Cooper Davis For Jym and the Reckoners “Ponder and believe that what is written there, even if obscure, is better and truer than any insights we can gain by our own efforts.” ~ St. Augustine, 2.17, De doctrina Christiana ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair ___________________________________ Committee Members ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee ____________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Mary Ellis Gibson, Dr. Annette Van, and Dr. Stephen Yarbrough for their constant support and excellent suggestions during my research and writing. This dissertation was completed with funding provided by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Mildred Kates Dissertation Fellowship and the Children’s Literature Association Hannah Beiter Graduate Student Research Grant. I am grateful for their support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………… 1 II. OF OTHER WORLDS…………………………………………………. 11 III. ONLY NOT TO DISBELIEVE………………………………………… 40 IV. A TISSUE OF UNREALITIES………………………………………… 77 V. WAKING A MEANING……………………………………………… 114 VI. THAT’S ALL………………………………………………………….. 148 VII. ON FAIRY STORIES .…………………………………………….......181 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………... 194 NOTES………………………………………………………………………………… 208 v 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Critical studies of Victorian novels typically focus on realist texts, often marginalizing experimental literary fantasy as important only to the development of children’s literature. I believe an historical gap exists in the study of nineteenth-century novels, one created by a critical preference for texts that uphold the mimetic tradition, for texts that privilege the depiction of knowable truth rather than the unreal. Though fantasy criticism has thoroughly addressed this disparity, this field still lacks many in-depth examinations of the philosophical, rhetorical, and experimental aspects of Victorian literary fantasy novels. My project explains how unexamined literary fantasies can offer critics an alternative history to the dominance of the realist mode during the Victorian era. I believe the rise of the literary fantasy novel marks a unique historical time in which fantasy authors anticipate contemporary debates within rhetorical and reader- response philosophy. By depicting impossible circumstances, unreal worlds, and fantastic characters, fantasy novels expose the artifice of language and force the reader to confront the problems of belief inherent in any act of interpretation and communication. In this project I define the literary fantasy novel as a genre that draws on Romantic poetic philosophy and foregrounds problems of literary interpretation and 2 belief. Therefore, I begin my project with an examination of the problem of literary belief expounded in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge’s discussion of the “willing suspension of disbelief” needed to properly read a fantastic text affected the development of the literary fantasy novel through his modeling of belief in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” He also influenced his daughter Sara Coleridge, who wrote one of the first Victorian literary fantasy novels, Phantasmion: Prince of Palmland (1837). This novel develops the philosophical problems of belief and interpretation that become central to experimental Victorian novels by George MacDonald (Phantastes 1858) and Jean Ingelow (Mopsa, the Fairy 1869). The texts I have chosen trace an engagement with and a development of the problem of literary belief through the use of the fantastic, though, of course, not all Victorian literary fantasies are part of this tradition. These experimental texts demonstrate the interesting position the reader occupies as she attempts to “make sense” out of a genre that revels in defying the very narrative structures and expectations we typically use to decipher a text. As we will see, these novels employ different techniques to direct readers’ desire for textual meaning. Taken as a group, they provide us with a variety of interpretive models for the fantasy reader; and they also reveal the way in which Victorian authors who worked outside the mimetic tradition imagined their experimental novels as part of the Victorian concern with the reader’s moral consciousness. Because these writers often addressed children in their work, my project closely examines the development of children’s literature, and I also discuss the separation of fantastic and realist literature in order to demonstrate why experimental novels had not 3 been successful with the average Victorian reader. I focus on how authors manipulated readers’ expectations for a fairy tale in order to use the trope of childlike wonder as a reading strategy that would encourage interpretive inquiry about the unity of the fantastic and the material. My primary thesis is that these authors used theories about literary belief (derived from Romantic influences) to structure their texts and to guide readers in how to read experimental fantasy work. The failure of these texts (seen in contemporary reviews) indicates much about the reading preferences for the nineteenth century, both for readers of realist and fantasy literature. I also combine rhetorical, reader-response, and fantasy criticism in order to elucidate the way nineteenth-century literary fantasies anticipate contemporary discussions on the interpretive and communicative problems that exist between author, reader, and text. I hope to expose a critical fallacy that divides nineteenth-century fantasy into extremes of either allegorical didacticism or escapist nonsense, for the literary fantasy novels I examine exist in the undefined area of Tzevtan Todorov’s fantastique, provoking readers to interpretation through the rejection of generic expectations. These texts, then, demonstrate the problem of literary belief for the nineteenth-century fantasy author and her readers by modeling readership through complicated rhetorical techniques. I begin this study by examining the differences and similarities in the mimetic and fantastic genres. Chapter Two gives a brief history of fantasy’s development, which should provide context for the rest of my project. In it I distinguish between closed allegorical fantasy and the open literary fantasies I have chosen to examine in this 4 project. This chapter also gives theoretical background for my discussion of fantasy and reader-response criticism. In Chapter Three, I examine the problems of literary belief with more specific textual and theoretical analysis by exploring the Romantic philosophies of the fantastic developed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This chapter discusses Coleridge’s idea that the reader must willingly suspend disbelief in order to experience a fantastic text. I incorporate an historical overview of this philosophy, including its connection to Coleridge’s understanding of the dramatic probability and textual unity needed to achieve this belief. Through Coleridge’s work I develop background for a discussion of fantasy literature, which blossoms during the Victorian era due to the increased
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