Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Identifier

6349

Date

2018

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

English

Committee Chair

John D. Miles

Committee Member

Jeffrey Scraba

Committee Member

Donal Harris

Committee Member

Darryl Domingo

Committee Member

Christine Eisel

Committee Member

William Campbell

Abstract

"'Duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem': Writing Utopia in Nineteenth Century America" argues that communitarian experiments were mediated through literary forms to make comprehensive systems of reform legible to the external world. The publication strategies of four nineteenth-century communitarian experiments demonstrate that communitarian reform thrived on a national scale within the fragmented, localized print networks that characterized the early portion of the century. Through depictions of Nashoba in periodicals, New Harmony in pamphlets, Brook Farm as a romance, and the Shaker-Tolstoy correspondence across print mediums, I trace authors' manipulations of acts of reading coordinated to reform the nation on a massive scale. Utopian experiments played a primary role in the expanding republic.as communitarian writers used these textual representations to explore the evolving relationship between individual and communal identities in the expanding republic.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to the local University of Memphis Electronic Theses & dissertation (ETD) Repository.

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