Inchbald, Hawthorne and the Romantic Moral Romance:
Little Histories and Neutral Territories
Ben P Robertson
978 1 85196 627 1: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
978 1 85196 589 2
This study explores the connections between British and American Romanticism, focusing on the novels of Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64). Inchbald sought to legitimize herself as a serious author in a society that privileged male authorship. Fifty years later, Hawthorne struggled to establish an indigenous American literature in a British-dominated publishing world.
Although the two authors wrote on opposite sides of the Atlantic and with different goals, they produced remarkably similar texts that point to a connection between British and American culture. Robertson characterizes their novels as the ‘Romantic moral romance’, a unique kind of romance that acts as an experimental sub-genre of the novel. He argues that Inchbald and Hawthorne are representative of a larger British/American cultural confluence.
Sample pages
Readership
Romanticism, American Literature, Women's Writing
Contents
Introduction: The Romantic Moral Romance: An Alternative Transatlantic Sub-Genre for Elizabeth Inchbald and Nathaniel Hawthorne
1 'Written in a Style to Endure': Common Sources for the Romantic Moral Romance and the Impact of Inchbald’s Transatlantic Reputation
2 'Fable-World[s]' Populated by 'Human Creatures': Toward a Definition of the Experimental Romantic Moral Romance
3 Adapting the 'Great Voicer of Truth': Shakespearean Liminality in the Romantic Moral Romance
4 'I Will Not Accept Your Moral!': Propositions of an Alternative, Individual and Liminal Moral Order for Inchbald and Hawthorne
5 Figures 'Pourtrayed Apart' with 'Real or Well-Counterfeited Simplicity': Complicating the Romantic Moral Romance with Symbolic and Fragmentary Figures
Conclusion: Echoes of the Romantic Moral Romance in the Modern, Symbolic Novel
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