Working at Romance [Elektronische Ressource] : poetics and ideology in novels of the antebellum American South 1824 - 1854 / vorgelegt von Zeno Ackermann

Working at “Romance”Poetics and Ideology in Novels of theAntebellum American South1824-1854Inaugural-Dissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürdeder Philosophischen Fakultät IV (Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften)der Universität Regensburgvorgelegt vonZeno AckermannRegensburg, 2004Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. phil. Udo HebelZweitgutachter: PD Dr. phil. habil. Paul NeubauerGreat genius and the people of these states must never bedemeaned to romances. As soon as histories are properly toldthere is no more need of romances.Walt Whitman, preface to 1st ed. of Leaves of Grass (1855)[T]here come to us from the deserts of the past certain voiceswhich "syllable men's names"––names that seem to sound like"Paulding," "Brown," "Kennedy"––and we catch nothing further.These are ghosts, and they wrote about ghosts, and the ghostshave vanished utterly. Another of these shadowy mediums . . . isW. Gilmore Simms, of whom the best and the worst thing to besaid is this––that he is nearly as good as Cooper, and deservesfame nearly as much.John William DeForest, "The Great American Novel" (1868)It was to this that the South owed her final defeat. It was for lackof a literature that she was left behind in the great race foroutside support, and that in the supreme moment of herexistence she found herself arraigned at the bar of the worldwithout an advocate and without a defence. . . . [S]he wasconquered by the pen rather than by the sword.