Author's Department/Program
English and American Literature
Language
English (en)
Date of Award
Summer 9-1-2014
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Chair and Committee
William McKelvy
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the lively interchange between Victorian literature, the science of language, and liberal politics. I argue that Victorian authors used language-science, the study of the origins and nature of human speech, as a powerful model for engaging the diminishing status of hereditary rule and the rise of popular sovereignty. Philologists and natural scientists presented a new understanding of language as a self-enclosed, evolutionary system. This autonomy of language, in turn, mirrored Victorian Britain's emerging liberal society, with its emphasis on self-governance and laissez-faire economics. While previous scholars have characterized Victorian language-science as depoliticized and reactionary, I show how works by Thomas Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, and the lesser-known but fascinating Darwinian poet Mathilde Blind draw on language-science to explore the redistribution of political power in the age of reform.
Recommended Citation
Barrow, Barbara Ann, "A "Living Political Dialect": The Science of Language and the Victorian Epic Impulse" (2014). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 1283.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/1283
Comments
This work is not available online per the author’s request. For access information, please contact digital@wumail.wustl.edu or visit http://digital.wustl.edu/publish/etd-search.html.
Permanent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7936/K7C827C0