Archaism, Or Textual Literalism in the Historical Novel
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2010 Archaism, or Textual Literalism in the Historical Novel Linell B Wisner University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Other English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Wisner, Linell B, "Archaism, or Textual Literalism in the Historical Novel. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2010. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/860 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Linell B Wisner entitled "Archaism, or Textual Literalism in the Historical Novel." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Amy J. Elias, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Thomas Haddox, William Hardwig, Jeri L. McIntosh Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Linell B. Wisner entitled ―Archaism, or Textual Literalism in the Historical Novel.‖ I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Amy J. Elias, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Thomas Haddox William Hardwig Jeri L. McIntosh Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official student records.) Archaism, or Textual Literalism in the Historical Novel A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Linell B. Wisner August 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Linell Buell Wisner All rights reserved. ii Acknowledgments I am extremely grateful to the many professors, colleagues, family members, and friends whose patience, encouragement, and support made this dissertation possible. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Amy Elias. By offering rigorous but constructive critique of a series of protean drafts, she nurtured my better ideas and encouraged my development as a writer and scholar. Without her guidance, this project would not have gotten much past its origins as a private hobby-horse. Thanks are also due to the other members of my committee, all of whom were gracious with their time and intellectual energy. Dr. Thomas Haddox always pointed me toward the most significant aspects of each chapter. Dr. Jeri McIntosh provided a much-needed historian‘s perspective upon my claims and materials, while Dr. Bill Hardwig emphasized the importance of stylistic and organizational clarity. During my years in Knoxville, I made many friends whose companionship enlivened what might otherwise have been a monkish existence in an unfamiliar city. These friends include many musicians: ―Uncle‖ David Ketterman, Mark Coram, David Kirby, Bill Teske, Tom Smith, and Jarrod Finger. The music we made together sustained me through many challenging months of writing. Lastly, I am indebted to my family, who have given me loving support and shown more patience than I deserve. Though my parents, Red and Avis Wisner, are with me only in memory, this dissertation is a tribute to their love of learning for its own sake. My sister Kay and my brother Jamie have continued my parents‘ legacy of indulging my educational enthusiasms by enduring insufferably long phone conversations about books they have not read. For this I owe both apologies and thanks. My wife‘s parents, Carol and Olin Mills, also deserve my gratitude iii for their support throughout my doctoral studies. They have always encouraged me to remain optimistic, usually against my inclination, and more than once they provided a hot meal when writing precluded my domestic duties. I owe the greatest debt to my wife Rachael, who has shared with me all of the anxieties and challenges of graduate student life. For her unwavering confidence, endless patience, and intellectual assistance throughout the writing process, I dedicate this dissertation to her. Most of all, I thank her for finding enough strength along the way to establish the loving home that we share with our new son John. iv Abstract This dissertation examines the technique of archaism as it has been practiced in the historical novel since that genre‘s origins. By ―archaism,‖ I refer to a variation of the strategy that Jerome McGann calls textual ―literalism,‖ whereby literary texts use ―thickly materialized‖ language and bibliographic forms to foreground their own ―textuality as such‖ (Black Riders 74). Archaism is distinguished from Blake‘s, Pound‘s, or Robert Carlton Brown‘s literalism by its imitation of older literary idioms, yet the specifically historical quality of its intertextuality also seems different from primarily formal imitations such as pastiche and parody. Although archaism appears to have originated as part of the special language of romance, this study focuses on the technique as a representational strategy within historical fiction. Thus I begin by interpreting Thomas Chatterton‘s faux-medieval forgeries (ca. 1770) as a kind of poetic antiquarianism, after which I trace the legacy of Chattertonian archaism in nineteenth-century historical novels including Scott‘s Ivanhoe (1819) and Thackeray‘s Henry Esmond (1852). The last two chapters address the twentieth-century return to archaism in John Barth‘s The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), William Golding‘s To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy (1980-1989), and William T. Vollmann‘s Argall (2001). Throughout, I rely extensively upon Georg Lukács‘s The Historical Novel (1937), approaching the latter novels as historical fiction rather than as specimens of such post-1960s genres as Linda Hutcheon‘s ―historiographic metafiction‖ or Amy J. Elias‘s ―metahistorical romance.‖ Lukács is especially useful because of his sense that historical fictions are animated by the mimetic imperative to represent historical ―reality.‖ Furthermore, the historical novel frame of these novels often serves to historicize literary form, disciplining both the simulation and the metafictionality that exemplify postmodern cultural praxis. Ultimately, I argue that archaism within the historical novel models a historical ―real‖ that is always constructed in a manner analogous to the construction of literary texts, positing a historicity in which imaginative literature offers a key figuration of social experience. Unlike Hutcheon, who advances similar claims for historiographic metafiction, I contend that these novels often use archaism to represent their historical referents as reality—a practice that recalls the ―classical‖ historical fiction of the nineteenth century. v By drawing equally on historical novel theory and on Hutcheon, Elias, and Fredric Jameson‘s analyses of post-1960s historical fiction as a representative form of aesthetic postmodernism, I synthesize two theoretical discussions which have typically been seen as incompatible. Similarly, this study emphasizes the continuity between old and new forms of historical fiction, expanding on Elias‘s salient observation that ―postmodern historical fiction stands in the refracted light of nineteenth-century historical novels‖ (Sublime Desire 6). Concepts of theoretical and aesthetic continuity, therefore, shape both the argument and the organization of this dissertation. vi Table of Contents List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………………... viii Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter One: What is Archaism? Oldspeak as History in Thomas Chatterton’s Rowley Poems……………………………………………………………………….………….. 23 Chapter Two: Archaism as Rhetoric in the Historical Novel, 1819-1907 ………………… 62 Chapter Three: Historicism in Hyper-Reality, or Archaism in post-1960s Historical Fiction ………………………………………………………………………………………….100 Chapter Four: Metafiction and Metahistory in Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor and Golding’s To the Ends of the Earth: A Sea Trilogy…………………………………………….. 160 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………… 218 Works Cited …………………………………………………………………………………. 225 Vita ………………………………………………………………………………………….... 242 vii List of Figures Figure 1. Page from the Kelmscott edition of William Morris’s The Story of the Glittering Plain. ……………….…………………………………………………………………... 3 Figure 2. A page from Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon. ……………………………..… 6 Figure 3. The first page of Chatterton’s “Englysh Metamorphosis.” …………………….. 41 Figure 4. Chatterton’s manuscript of “The Account of William Canynge’s Feast.” ….… 47 Figure 5. The first page of Thackeray’s Henry Esmond. ……………………………….….. 79 Figure 6. A neo-Victorian chapter beginning from William De Morgan’s Alice-for-Short. …………………………………………………………………………………………....84