Wieland ; and Memoirs of Carwin the biloquist : authoritative texts, sources and contexts, criticism

Book

Wieland ; and Memoirs of Carwin the biloquist : authoritative texts, sources and contexts, criticism / Charles Brockden Brown ; edited by Bryan Waterman.

Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771-1810 (Author). Waterman, Bryan, 1970- (editor.). Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771-1810 Memoirs of Carwin the biloquist. (Added Author).

Summary:

The first gothic novel in America, Wieland (1798) is now available in a Norton Critical Edition. Wieland, the story of religious delusion and horrific violence on the eve of the American Revolution, is a cornerstone of the Early American literary canon. A family living on an estate outside Philadelphia is visited by a set of mysterious voices, seemingly coming out of thin air, that are followed soon after by an itinerant rustic named Carwin. Violence erupts when the family's young patriarch believes he hears God's voice demanding a human sacrifice as a sign of faith. Testing the limits of religious and literary authority in the new United States, Brown's novel has for more than two centuries kept readers debating questions of agency, accountability, and revolutionary politics. The editor provides explanatory annotations throughout the volume.

This Norton Critical Edition also reprints Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, Brown's fragmentary sequel to Wieland. A section of "Sources and Contexts" presents inspirations for Brown's work, including an account of the real-life Yates family murders, an excerpt from Christoph Martin Wieland's The Trial of Abraham, and religious and medical accounts of delusion, spontaneous combustion, and ventriloquism. Brown's outline for Wieland and his letter to Thomas Jefferson are also reprinted.

"Criticism" includes contemporary responses to Wieland from both the United States and the United Kingdom, along with fourteen essential modern critical approaches. Contributors include Shirley Samuels, Christopher Looby, Nancy Ruttenberg, Laura Korobkin, David Kazanjian, Bryan Waterman, and Stephen Shapiro, among others.

A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included. --Book Jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 9780393932539
ISBN: 0393932532
Physical Description: xii, 582 pages ; 22 cm.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: New York : W.W. Norton & Co., ©2011.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (pages 579-582).
Formatted Contents Note:: The texts of Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist -- Sources and contexts. From the Trial of Abraham / Chistoph Martin Wieland ; From Enquiry concerning political justice / William Godwin ; [The Yates family murders] / Anonymous ; From Zoonomia, or, The laws of organic life / Erasmus Darwin ; [On the illusions of the human senses] / Samuel Latham Mitchill ; [A case of spontaneous combustion] / Anonymous ; [Dobson's Encyclopaedia: "Ventriloquism"] ; From Proofs of a conspiracy / John Robison ; The duty of Americans at the present crisis / Timothy Dwight ; Outline of Wieland ; Letter to Thomas Jefferson, December 15, 1798 / Charles Brockden Brown -- Criticism. Early estimates. From The life of Charles Brockden Brown / William Dunlap ; [On Brown's novels] ; Blackwood's Edinburgh magazine on Brown I ; II ; Brown's novels -- Wieland / Anonymous -- The modern critical revival. The voices of Wieland / Bernard Rosenthal ; "Do you know the author?" : the question of authorship in Wieland / Walter Hesford ; Wieland : a literary and historical reading / Edwin Sill Fussell ; [Patriarchal violence, Federalist panic, and Wieland] / Shirley Samuels ; [Ciceronian elocution in Wieland] / Christopher Looby ; Constitutional secrets : "Memoirs of Carwin" and the politics of concealment / Paul Downes ; [The voice of the people in Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin] / Nancy Ruttenburg ; [Enlightenment, ventriloquism, and Wieland / Leigh Eric Schmidt ; Murder by madman : criminal responsibility, law, and judgment in Wieland / Laura H. Korobkin ; [Brown's politics of imagination] / Edward Cahill ; [White settler colonialism in Memoirs of Carwin] / David Kazanjian ; Carwin the peasant rebel / Ed White ; [The illuminati scare, social authority, and brown's fiction] / Bryan Waterman ; [Wieland's political romance and the history of subjectivity] / Stephen Shapiro.