This thesis examines the tradition of the Great American Novel (GAN). Against current academic trends, this literary canon is not understood to safeguard conservative hegemonies. Here, it is rather...Show moreThis thesis examines the tradition of the Great American Novel (GAN). Against current academic trends, this literary canon is not understood to safeguard conservative hegemonies. Here, it is rather studied as an ongoing discourse that has questioned ostensible certainties in American national identity throughout the twentieth century. A select number of GANs are shown to have survived in the canon for decades, and to share an even more select number of archetypes which the novels consistently problematise. The continued resonance of these narratives is argued to be indicative of inherent ambiguities that fester on in American identity as cultural unfinished business. An added relevance is the fact that those uncertainties cropped up precisely during periods when US nationalism seemed to peak, a pattern that forms a surprising, alternative cultural history. The term “Great American Novel” was coined in 1868 by John William DeForest, who called for realist American novels to equal European ones, and to present an imagined US community that overcame post-Civil War regional divisions. Ever since, the tradition has been alluring to American authors seeking to establish their cultural weight. Yet the canon as we know it today only took shape after the confidence-boosting outcome of the First World War, when critics and academics renounced the European, realist ideals of their predecessors in favour of “Romance”, a symbolical style which they claimed had always been the basis of literary American exceptionalism. Retroactively, The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn were canonised as the Romance-edifice, as if they had always been just that. Their archetypes, namely individualism, the American Dream and the frontier spirit, together became a national mythology of sorts, so successful was this invented tradition. Soon it was so familiar, that subsequent authors who sought to reflect on American identity could do so by alluding to those three ultimate GANs. The canon thus became an ongoing discourse, a cultural conversation in which a limited set of rules and clichés were contemplated as national roots. Authors from the Great Depression were the first to demonstrate this. They took the three tropes mentioned, and superimposed them onto topical stories of economic hardship. GANs from the era thus romanticised the canonical archetypes as the eternal foundations of American exceptionalism, precisely by linking their betrayal to contemporary, “un-American” injustices. The years following the Second World War, by contrast, saw such a boost to national confidence that they were named a “Golden Age.” Yet a new generation of authors showed its teeth by digging up GAN-archetypes and weaponizing them, especially those related to frontier-adventurism, against contemporary ideals of dull material comfort. Indeed, the canon’s role as underminer of cultural certainties became fixed in these years. Hence the nadir in GAN-output amid the blows to American superiority of the 1960s and 1970s: the eras of Vietnam and Watergate required no reminding of American problems. The Reaganist 1980s did, however. Especially black authors began to attack Americans’ sense of innocence regarding their history, by again returning to the GANs’ archetypes: taken as the roots of US exceptionalism, they were rewritten as shared traumas. Far from weakening the canon’s position, this attack on its traditions actually revitalised its function as ongoing discourse. Consequently, the 1990s saw more (critically acclaimed) GAN-attempts than any other decade. Within them, authors indicated how the end of the Cold War not only boosted American exceptionalism, but also left it without a signifying Other, and thus without direction and narrative. Again, cultural confidence in the wake of a victory in a major global conflict was being undermined by GANs’ exposing hidden ambivalences in national mythology. The GAN’s imagined community has always destabilised American certainties. The canon forms a surprising, alternative cultural history, in which anxieties invisible in other histories come to the fore, precisely when one would least expect them to. Understanding canons as mere conservative bastions is thus argued to be highly reductive, and damaging to their rich analytical promise in cultural analysis. NB: Dubbelscriptie t.b.v. de opleidingen MA Literary Studies en MA GeschiedenisShow less
Deze scriptie behandelt de vraag hoe het verleden zich al dan niet laat ervaren via film. Specifiek richt ik mij op de notie van presence - een voelbare, onbemiddelde ervaring van het verleden. Dit...Show moreDeze scriptie behandelt de vraag hoe het verleden zich al dan niet laat ervaren via film. Specifiek richt ik mij op de notie van presence - een voelbare, onbemiddelde ervaring van het verleden. Dit idee problematiseer ik aan de hand van een excurs door de Kritische Theorie, specifiek waar deze film aan de orde stelt. Naar blijkt is de ervaring (van het verleden) niet een kwestie van een onbemiddelde aanwezigheid, maar zelf een historisch bemiddelde categorie.Show less
This thesis exlores the interlinkage between cats and women in the domestic sphere. It goes into the more overall image and treatment of cats around 1900, but also more explicitly within the...Show moreThis thesis exlores the interlinkage between cats and women in the domestic sphere. It goes into the more overall image and treatment of cats around 1900, but also more explicitly within the domestic sphere and the ideal of domesticity. However, the final chapter demonstrates how cats could actually be utilized by women to escapte the narrow notion of domesticity. Animal agency and the animal experience are important factors as well.Show less
In this thesis, the distinction between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism is questioned through a study of sources from the Confederate States government during the American Civil War. Key...Show moreIn this thesis, the distinction between ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism is questioned through a study of sources from the Confederate States government during the American Civil War. Key concepts in this study are 'othering', 'framing' and theories from heritage studies. The main conclusion is that Confederate nationalism cannot be defined solely as ethnic or civic. The creation of Confederate nationalism is a continuously changing process and can be adjusted to support various differing narratives.Show less
This thesis seeks to answer the question "In what way did the pamphleteers of Great Britain identify the colonists living in America during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War (1764-1783)...Show moreThis thesis seeks to answer the question "In what way did the pamphleteers of Great Britain identify the colonists living in America during the American Revolution and Revolutionary War (1764-1783)? To find an answer to this question, twenty pamphlets (each for every year the Revolution and War took place) have been researched. The question of whether or not nationalism was at play during this time has also been a guideline while writing, and researching for, this thesis.Show less
Between January and April 1861, in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's election, the seceding lower South states sent five secession commissioners to Virginia to persuade the Virginians to secede and...Show moreBetween January and April 1861, in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's election, the seceding lower South states sent five secession commissioners to Virginia to persuade the Virginians to secede and join in forming the Confederacy. This study examines why all but one failed to achieve their goal. While this thesis only gives a partial answer, it sheds light on a number of complexities regarding both the commissioners' efforts and Virginia's secession crisis.Show less
This MA thesis discusses the depiction of President Nixon and the Watergate Affair in various works of popular culture. During the Watergate Affair Nixon committed various crimes, such as the...Show moreThis MA thesis discusses the depiction of President Nixon and the Watergate Affair in various works of popular culture. During the Watergate Affair Nixon committed various crimes, such as the obstruction of justice and the abuse of power. He resigned on August 9 1974, the only American President ever to have done so. His successor, President Ford, pardoned him for these crimes. Nixon has never been convicted for them, to the dismay of many Americans. By now Nixon has become a controversial figure in American history. He is and will be always be remembered for the Watergate Affair. He also dragged out the American involvement in Vietnam for several years, resulting in massive anti-war protests and outpourings of great hatred against him. However, Nixon was also the American President who succeeded in achieving a détente with the Soviet Union, normalising relations with China and initiating the first SALT-treaty to limit nuclear arms. Moreover, he bettered the plight of Native Americans and steered through Congress important environmental legislation. Nixon, whose fate was essentially a tragic one, has inspired writers, poets, playwrights, directors and musicians to produce very interesting works of art. Philip Roth wrote ‘Our Gang’, a political satire depicting Nixon, amongst other things, as chief devil. Gore Vidal wrote a play about him, ‘An Evening with Richard Nixon’, as well as the historical novel ‘Burr’ about Aaron Burr, another villain in American history, which displays interesting parallels with Nixon and his time. The film ‘All the President’s Men’ is by far the most well-known work discussed in this thesis, dealing with the two young reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the ‘Washington Post’, who played an important role in uncovering the affair. Robert Altman’s ‘Secret Honor’ and Oliver Stone’s ‘Nixon’ not only portray Nixon, but also examine his cultural significance. The same is true for ‘The Assassination of Richard Nixon’, in which Nixon is not an actual character, but the figurehead of a sick and dishonest society. Ron Howard’s ‘Frost/Nixon’, the most recent work discussed in this thesis, paints a more positive and humane picture of Nixon. This is in accordance with a general tendency, within works of popular culture, to depict Nixon with much more depth, with more attention to Nixon as a human-being, and in a more balanced and positive way.Show less
This thesis purposes to understand how a deeply committed Christian people viewed their claims to power as they did; and through the American Civil War laid down their lives in terrible numbers to...Show moreThis thesis purposes to understand how a deeply committed Christian people viewed their claims to power as they did; and through the American Civil War laid down their lives in terrible numbers to preserve the way of life which they had forged for themselves. The Old South deemed itself to be the societal manifestation of biblical Scripture, a social order bestowed by Providence and ‘ordained of God’ . This apparent manifestation of God’s will produced a patriarchal, hierarchical slave society, legitimised almost entirely through literal readings of Scripture, and the reading of such alongside contemporary political and economic theories. Here, I will examine the forging of an ideology and social order based solidly in the realities of biblical Scripture, which Southerners believed to be just - so much so that the bloodiest war ever fought on U.S soil raged for more than four long years. Thusly, through examining the extent and depth of the effort to situate slavery on Christian ground, and build a class-stratified social order ordained of God, one may obtain some understanding as to the Southern whites’ readiness to defend a social system so odiously abhorrent, even by contemporary standards. The research focus of this paper is to present an understanding of the ways in which this deeply committed Christian people viewed their world and their claims to power as they did, and how this view emerged and was influenced by the Christian Scriptures.Show less
In zijn werk 'The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere' beschrijft Jürgen Habermas hoe er in de 18de en 19de eeuw een bourgeois publieke sfeer ontstond in Duitsland, Frankrijk en Groot...Show moreIn zijn werk 'The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere' beschrijft Jürgen Habermas hoe er in de 18de en 19de eeuw een bourgeois publieke sfeer ontstond in Duitsland, Frankrijk en Groot-Brittannië. In deze scriptie wordt, aan de hand van Benjamin Franklin, gekeken of in Brits koloniaal Amerika deze sfeer ook voet aan de grond kreeg.Show less
