Shanghai International Studies University
IMAGINING NATIONAL IDENTITY IN AMERICAN GOTHIC
FICTION: 1776-1861
A Thesis Submitted to Graduate School and College of English
In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements for
Degree of Doctor of Arts
By Liu Minxia
Under Supervision of Professor Yu Jianhua
May, 2011
Acknowledgements
Many individuals and institutions have been very supportive and helpful in the
preparation and composition of this dissertation and I would like to extend my hearty
gratitude to all of them. The list of names is long. It must begin with my supervisor
Professor Yu Jianhua, who, as a teacher, first awakened my interest in the topic under
discussion in this dissertation. His critical intelligence and inspirational encouragement
have been extremely invaluable over the past three years during which time this project
was developed and completed. I have enormously benefited from his extensive and
incisive commentary. Without his inspiration and support the completion of this
dissertation would have been impossible.
I am also profoundly indebted to Professor Huang Lushan of Shanghai University,
whose expertise and generosity were invaluable for me. I would also like to thank those
professors of SISU who have inspired me. They include Professor Wang Enming,
Professor Li Weiping, Professor Zhang Dingquan, Professor Qiao Guoqiang, Professor
Zhang Helong, and Professor Zha Mingjing.
I am also deeply grateful to Mr. Cook Lee for his continuing encouragement and
limitless patience, which meant a lot to me in the past three years. I also wish to express
sincere thanks to those of the same supervisor: Dr. Zhou Min, Dr. Wang Yixuan, Dr. Chen
Guangxing, Dr. Chen Junsong, Dr. Zeng Gui’e, Dr. Qi Tao, and Dr. Jin Wenning. My
classmates have been very supportive in the development and completion of this project.
They include Liu Qijun, Yang Li, Zhang Jun, and Ye Weifang. My deepest gratitude also
goes to Zhao Ying, who has been encouraging and supporting me all the time. The
librarians of the Sishu Library and the National Library of China were of great assistance.
And I would like to extend sincere thanks to all of them.
My final and deepest expressions of gratitude are reserved for my parents, my
daughter, and my brothers and brother-in-laws for their constant encouragement and
love.
i
摘 要
无论是国内还是国外，和英国哥特小说研究相比，美国哥特小说研究的质与量
都非常有限。这主要是因为在 1764 年哥特小说诞生后的半个多世纪里，英国哥特小
说大量涌现，而且特点鲜明，由此导致了学者对美国文学哥特性的质疑。事实上，
深受英国哥特小说影响的美国哥特小说在经历了本土化过程后，在文学表现形式和
文学诉求上都有了突出的特点。哥特小说关注的核心主题虽然是内心的焦虑和恐惧，
但由此认为哥特小说无关政治就太过主观武断。事实上，作为社会产物和历史记录
（尽管是间接的）的哥特小说，积极地参与了政治，探讨和反思了社会的方方面面。
本文正是通过分析内战前六位作家的哥特小说，阐述了哥特小说对民族身份建构的
想象和反思，探讨了民族身份的本质，并表达了对其稳固性及持久性的渴望与担忧。
美国哥特小说在本土化并繁荣发展的时期——独立革命到内战前，正是美国民
族身份确立的时期，是美利坚各州“合众”
（United States）从复数变成单数的时期。
也就是说，在这一时期内，美国从无到有，从殖民地到独立，从自由平等的州到由
星条旗代表和象征的统一国家。 民族身份的研究源于历史、政治、和社会学研究中
民族主义的研究，近些年受到文学评论家的关注，并应用到文学研究领域，和历史
语境相结合，对文本进行新的解读和阐释。文化历史学家本尼迪克特·安德森认为
国家是一种想象的政治共同体。也就是说，一个国家的人由于政治原因获得民族身
份后，通过想象自己属于一个共同体、想象着自己拥有属于该共同体的身份而获得
归属感。安德森的这一观点强调想象的功能，而想象是文学的特质，正是二者的契
合点为本研究提供了灵感。然而，这种通过想象而获得的归属感是动态的，这种身
份也不是一成不变的。从早期对民族身份的困惑，到后来对民族身份的担忧和反思，
被很多评论家认为无关政治的哥特小说一直在参与民族身份的建构。本文通过分析
詹姆斯·库珀的《莱昂内尔·林肯》（1825）、华盛顿·欧文的《瑞普·凡·温克》
（1819－1820）、查尔斯·布朗的《威兰》（1798）、纳撒尼尔·霍桑的《福谷传奇》
（1852）、爱伦·坡的《阿瑟·戈登·皮姆的故事》（1838）和赫尔曼·麦尔维尔的
《皮埃尔》
（1852），探讨从独立战争到内战期间美国哥特小说对民族身份建构所进
行的想象和反思。
本文共由五部分构成。第一部分除了文献综述和概念探讨，还介绍了本研究的
ii
理论框架。第二部分通过分析《莱昂内尔·林肯》和《瑞普·凡·温克》解析独立
革命后的民族身份困惑；第三部分围绕《威兰》和《福谷传奇》分析哥特小说对国
家未来的构想和对民族身份的担忧；第四部分结合美国内战前的政治动荡解析《阿
瑟·戈登·皮姆的故事》和《皮埃尔》
，阐述内部矛盾对民族身份建构带来的威胁和
危害；论文最后得出结论：美国哥特小说反映了美国民族身份认同形成时期的政治
混乱和社会变迁，思索和探讨了独立战争后新身份的困惑、民族身份的稳固性和持
久性，并表达了对共和国未来的担忧。
关键词：美国哥特小说；民族身份；文学想象
iii
Abstract
American Gothic fiction has generally gone unobserved since its birth. In contrast
with the articles and books devoted to British Gothic fiction mushrooming in the second
half of the twentieth century, study of American Gothic fiction remains limited in quantity
and rudimentary in quality mainly due to two reasons: one is that American Gothic fiction
varies greatly from the so-called classical Gothic fiction and takes on new characteristics
in the process of Americanization; the other is that a considerable number of scholars only
see the classical Gothic texts as legitimate, thus denying the existence of American Gothic
literature. The once popular view seems rather subjective and arbitrary that the Gothic
fiction is apolitical on account of its focal concentration on inner fear and anxiety. Close
scrutiny reveals that American Gothic fiction, as part of social product and (indirect)
historical record, involves itself in politics and reflects almost every aspect of the society.
This dissertation takes six Gothic texts by six antebellum writers as example to analyze
how American Gothic fiction of this period addresses problems related to American
national identity, in particular, its nature, stability, and endurance.
The transformative and formative decades between the Revolution and the Civil War
witnessed the harassing perplex caused by identity crisis and the disquieting process
during which the United States evolved from a union of free and equal states to a unified
and sovereign nation emblematized by the Stripes and Stars, and more importantly, the
recognition of the national identity as American. Scholarly interest in national identity
originates from the study of nation and nationalism in the fields of history, politics, and
sociology. It merits attention from literary scholars, who apply it to the interpretation of
literary texts. Cultural historian Benedict Anderson proposes that “nation” is an imagined
political community. Namely, members of a nation develop sense of belonging by
imaging that they are part of the same community. National identity is something fixed
and fluid at the same time and the sense of belonging is not developed once and for all. A
focal point of Anderson’s proposition is imagination, the very source to which literature
also resorts for its existence. And it is this coincidence that inspired the author of this
iv
thesis.
This dissertation aims to explore how the antebellum Gothic fiction addresses
problems in relation to national identity based on an analysis of Lionel Lincoln (1825),
“Rip Van Winkle” (1819-1820), Wieland (1798), The Blithedale Romance (1852), The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym from Nantucket (1838), and Pierre; or the Ambiguities
(1852). The dissertation is divided into five parts. The first part briefly introduces the
Americanization of British Gothic fiction and the theoretical framework of this
dissertation apart from a review of the study of national identity and antebellum Gothic
fiction. It is followed by an interpretation of Lionel Lincoln and “Rip Van Winkle” to
reveal the perplexity caused by identity crisis which harassed the early Americans. The
next part deals with the fluidity of national identity based on an analysis of Wieland and
The Blithedale Romance, which is followed by the study of The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym from Nantucket and Pierre; or the Ambiguities to discuss how the Gothic
fiction articulates the national desire and anxiety for a stable national identity menaced by
the internal conflicts. After close examination of the confusion caused by identity crisis
and the nature of national identity, it finally concludes that American Gothic fiction
reflects the political turbulence and social changes of the formative decades between the
Revolution and the Civil War and articulates the worries and anxiety about the future of
the young republic.
Keywords: American Gothic fiction; National identity; Literary imagination
v
Contents
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………i
Abstract in Chinese………………….………..…………………………………………ii
Abstract in English……………………..….…………………...………………………..iv
Introduction……………………………………………...……………………………..1
Chapter One Duality and Confusion of National Identity…………………………28
1.1 Lionel Lincoln: Duality of National Identity…………………...…………………28
1.2 “Rip Van Winkle:” Who I Am………………………….….…………………..41
Chapter Two
Fluidity of National Identity………………….…………………53
2.1 Wieland: Future of the Republican Utopia…………………………………….53
2.2 The Blithedale Romance: Failure of the Modern Arcadia……………..………66
Chapter Three (In)stability of National Identity…………………...……….………...80
3.1 Poe’s Fiction: National Identity Menaced by Internal Conflicts.………………80
3.2 Pierre; or the Ambiguities: Melville’s Envision of the End……………………98
Conclusion……………………………….…………………………………...…….….112
Bibliography …………………………………………………………….…….………115
vi
Introduction
American renowned scholar Leslie Fiedler, after close scrutiny of writers from
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) to William Faulkner (1897-1962) and John
Hawkes (1925-1998), concluded that “American literature is, bewilderingly and
embarrassingly, a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and melodramatic -- a
literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation” and that it is the
gothic form that has been most fruitful in the hands of the best American writers (1966:
28-29). In other words, American literature began in a Gothic mode. Another well-known
scholar Richard Chase joined Fiedler when he emphasized the importance of romance
(Gothic as a modern romance as claimed by Walpole in Preface to The Castle of Otranto)
in American native tradition of the novel (1957: Viii). He noted that the element of
romance has been far more noticeable in American novel than in the English. He even
drew the conclusion that the best American novelists have found uses for romance far
beyond the escapism, fantasy, and sentimentality that were often associated with it. They
have used romance to introduce into the novel what one may roughly describe as the
narrow profundity of New England Puritanism, the skeptical, rationalist spirit of the
Enlightenment, and the imaginative freedom of Transcendentalism (1957: xx).
A research topic on the Gothic fiction would not seem “grand” enough in
significance for a book-length dissertation, a product of many a year’s toil. But it should
be remembered that Postmodernists have challenged the canon by raising questions about
who we study, what we study, why and how. And metahistorians have suggested that
every work of history is essentially an imaginative work, a narrative slightly different
from a novel. As a matter of fact, in both literature and history, important changes are
taking place, with more and more scholars seriously questioning the methods of each
discipline, the validity of the disciplinary boundaries institutionalized by our universities,
the texts typically and repeatedly studied, and the ideologies embedded within our various
scholarly enterprise. As a result, works which were not canonical are being under scrutiny.
In fact, the study of the Gothic has been on the rise in the past 30 years or so.
1
It should also be remembered that early American literature, largely imitative, was
effectively still a part of the British culture and one cannot deny the omnipresence of the
British literature. When American novel began, most popular writers in Britain were not
Samuel Richardson (1689-1761), Henry Fielding (1707-1754), or Laurence Sterne
(1713-1768) but William Godwin (1756-1836), Robert Bage (1730-1801), Anne Radcliffe
(1764-1823), and “Monk” Lewis (1775-1818), whose masterpieces are labeled and
anthologized as the Gothic. As is recorded, about a third of all fiction published in volume
form between 1796 and 1806 was frankly ‘Gothic” in character in Britain (Davidson,
1988: vii). According to Davidson, the American market, even decades after the
Revolution, was flooded with European products, either imported directly or pirated by
American printers from European originals. And he cited the example of the 1804
catalogue for New York library of fiction with some forty American titles in a list of
almost fifteen hundred works (ibid.: 11). Besides, the growth of popular magazines
increased the proliferation of supernatural tales, and “penny dreadful” provided the
working class with serialized tales of the macabre. Toni Morrison has convincingly
argued for the strong affinity between the nineteenth-century American psyche and
Gothic romance and noted that the Gothic romance became the “cherished expression of
young America” (1992: 36).
All in all, it is not exaggerating to say that the Gothic
permeated in every corner of early American culture and literature and more scholarly
attention should be directed to it.
Study of national identity derives from that of nationalism. It holds that mankind is
naturally divided into distinct nations, each with its peculiar character and shared ties and
culture. But in the course of generations, the members of most nations forget their
identities and failed to recognize the ties that bind them. Therefore, national identity is not
acquired once and for all. It is in flux. And more problematically, the members’
recognition of this communal identity varies greatly, especially in the formative years.
The decades from the Revolution to the Civil War was such formative years, during which
time the United States evolved for their members from a union of free and equal states to
a unified and sovereign nation. This study, by examining six Gothic tales of this phrase,
aims to reveal how the Gothic fiction is involved in politics and how it imagines and
2
rethinks profoundly the national identity of Americans, in particular, the character, the
stability, and the endurance of this identity. With the goals and limitations of contextual
criticism in mind, I have attempted in the present study to emphasize the neglected
contexts of American Gothic fiction. The Gothic tales under discussion in the present
study are not an arbitrary selection, but grow from a much extensive survey of the
considerable body of Gothic literature produced in the decades from the Revolution to the
Civil War. It is asserted that the Gothic fiction in this period is especially concerned with
the question of national identity. The period of time under consideration in the study
could be more easily explained. It was the Revolution that forged the nation of the United
States, which made possible the imagination of a sovereign community to which its
members belong.
The study concludes in 1861, when the existence of the nation was at
stake and after which the nation became a unified polity. It was during these antebellum
decades that the Stars and Stripes came to represent the Union rather than the free states.
It should be noted that literature is not history. But it is no doubt that literature
reflects history, revealing the social context out of which it is produced and could be read
as a historical resource. Literary texts are a crucial part of the historical record. This study
does not claim that every word in the Gothic fiction is factually true. But they do mirror
the society out of which they were produced.
Gothic Fiction: Definition and Evolution and Appropriations
in the U. S. A
The craze for the Gothic fiction began by Horace Walpole (1717-1797) and
developed by his followers such as Matthew Gregory Lewis, William Godwin, Ann
Radcliffe, and Mary W. Shelly (1797-1851). The Gothic romance emerged in England
when the novel was only a few decades old. But unexpectedly it found an enthusiastic
readership in Britain, North America, and Germany around the turn of the century. Bred
in a largely rationalist culture, the young writers who were struggling to invent an
American literature comparable to that of Europe thought tales of spectres and
3
superstition a fitful mode to question reason and decency. Charles Brockden Brown
(1771-1810), Washington Irving (1783-1859), Edgar Allan Poe (1840-1849), Nathaniel
Hawthorne (1804-1864), and Herman Melville (1819-1891), the great originators of
American fiction, were greatly influenced by the Gothic fashion. As mentioned above,
Leslie Fiedler and Richard Chase have argued in their respective works that American
literature is a Gothic fiction -- a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light
and affirmation and the best American novelists have been working under the shadow of
the Gothic.
In 1764, Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto and added the subtitle A
Gothic Story to its Second British Edition of 1765. Thus began a long-standing mode of
fiction-making that has come to be called “the Gothic.” In the past two and a half
centuries, it has proliferated in many forms: novels, plays, poems, paintings, operas,
newspapers, and even TV shows. There exist a set of transportable but discernable
features which define the Gothic clearly enough, especial the early Gothic. But as Jerrolde
E. Hogle notes, “its variations are not so much similar in compositional form as they are
inclined to share certain settings, symbols, situations, psychological states, and emotional
effects on readers or audiences, all of which appear at least somewhat in The Castle of
Otranto but have gone on to vary greatly in their manifestations over time” (2006: xiii).
In the first place, the setting of the Gothic is generally extreme situations, such as
time-honored castle, dark abbey, creepy graveyard, craggy mountains, dilapidated train
station, rusted manufacturing plant, or haunted wilderness reminiscent of medieval
“Gothic” castles or churches with its darkness, and solitude, producing an effect that is
inspiring and vaguely threatening. It is not only the dim and eerie interiors of such
buildings that unsettle the reader, but the secret passages, hidden trapdoors, cellars, and
attics. The space is usually sort of frightening middle-land between life and death, reality
and imagination, natural and supernatural, light and darkness, normal and abnormal, or
sane and insane, haunted by some form of ghost, specter, monster, or other superstitious
occurrences. Usually this mysterious and terrifying figure betokens some hidden “prime
crime” buried from ages ago or having occurred in the recent past, the truth about which
at least seems to lie in the darkest depths, or deepest darkness, of the antiqued space (ibid.:
4
xvi).
Thematically, the early Gothic is initially about the restoration of a usurped
inheritance to its rightful heir, feudal cruelties and persecution, Protestant opposition to
Catholicism, the oppression of women by the patriarchy. Later writers introduce themes
of psychology, morality, self, and society, which greatly enrich and expand the territory of
the Gothic. The Gothic often provides a voice for the silent or the repressed. For example,
Frankenstein’s monster (in Mary W. Shelley’s Frankenstein) speaks for many in his
complaint of bitter treatment from his creator and almost all the other people that he
meets. He speaks for women and even for contemporary black slaves in ways that the text
does not need to make overt (Lloyd-Smith, 2004: 121).
A third easily noticeable feature of the Gothic is the stock characters -- innocent
young woman suffering and repressed, and the lascivious male villain victimizing and
oppressing, portrayed as opposing extremes at the two ends of the spectrum of human
nature. Typically, the antagonists are dark, brooding, and silent, with guilty secrets. These
mad or evil people present us with “doubles,” the other side to the traits respectable
society has chosen to uphold. Instead of honesty and credibility they represent deceit and
untrustworthiness. Portrait of
these characters is out of the narrative and thematic need,
whose central concern is confrontation and antagonism, as Jerrold Hogle says that “the
Gothic is ... continuously about confrontations between the low and the high ... [I]t is
about its own blurring of different levels of discourse while it is also concerned with the
interpenetration of other opposed conditions -- including life/death, natural/supernatural,
ancient/modern, realistic/artificial, and unconscious/conscious--along with the abjection
of these crossings into haunting and supposedly deviant ‘others’ that therefore attract and
terrify middle-class characters and readers” (2002: 9). Last but not least, historically and
justifiably Gothic narratives have resorted to devices such as ghosts, apparitions, speaking
portraits, monstrous and grotesque creatures, and hallucinations, which embody, in one
way or another, the desire and anxiety underneath in the deepest darkness of human
unconsciousness.
Etymologically, Gothic derives from “Goth”, the name of the Germanic tribes
invading Eastern and Western Europe between the third and fifth centuries and signifies
5
the uncivilized, barbarian or ignorant. And it was used by Italian Renaissance scholars of
the 1400s who wanted to disparage styles of architecture, especially churches or castles in
the “dark age” by connecting them to “barbarian” tribes. It has been interpreted quite
broadly from the moment of its emergence. Walpole saw it as a combination of the
supernatural “ancient” and the more realistic “modern” romance (Walpole’s own words in
his 1765 “Preface”), showing that it was unstable from its very outset. Critics Fred
Botting is right when he states that “Gothic is an inscription neither of darkness nor of
light, a delineation neither of reason and morality nor of superstition and corruption,
neither good nor evil, but both at the same time. Relations between real and fantastic,
sacred and profane, supernatural and natural, past and present, civilized and barbaric,
rational and fanciful, remain crucial to the Gothic dynamic of limit and transgression”
(1996: 9). It is no coincidence that the conventions of Gothic literature, as numerous
critics have pointed out, seem to capture so precisely the alienated nature of colonial
experience.1 As mentioned above, American literature began in a Gothic mode and
American Gothic fiction appealed to the popular audience in a rapidly growing readership
due to the development of cheap printing technology, private circulating libraries, an
explosive growth in magazine production and consumption at the beginning of the
nineteenth century (Ringe, 1982: 14-15).
Another reason for the popularity of the Gothic was a near revolution in aesthetics
and in philosophy, introducing the concept of increasing appreciation for the nature of
experiences characterized by the “sublime" and beautiful” by depicting and then engaging
in experiences comprised of elements that are contrary in nature, such as terror, death, and
evil, helped attract attention to the aesthetic power of the “Sublime,” showing how even
the emotion of fear or horror might be pleasurable in the right context (Burke, 1757).
What had been thought previously as monstrous, savage, or terrifying might alternatively
be seen as sublimely affecting through its production of powerful emotional reactions on
the part of the observer, and stretching mountains, violent seas, and mysterious castles are
1
See, for example, Gail Ching-Liang Low’s White Skins, Black Masks, 113-55 and Patrick
Brantlinger’s Rule of Darkness, 227-53. The connection between the Gothic and colonialism is also
central to a much wider range of work on nineteenth-century literature, including Robert Dixon’s
Writing the Colonial Adventure and John Docker’s The Nervous Ninties.
6
preferred to tranquil and ordered landscapes. Immanuel Kant’s philosophical ideas also
became popular as a revolution in thought, with stress on subjective and intuitive sources
of knowledge. Knowledge could be acquired through intuition, which energized Romantic
aesthetics. Much of the early Gothic was concerned with the aesthetics of wildness and
sublimity, and the difficulties of correct subjective knowledge (Lloyd-Smith, 2004:
27-28).
Like writers in any country that has achieved independence through revolution, early
American novelists faced the Herculean task of creating a literature against the
overwhelming impact of their nation’s residual Colonial culture. Thus, the young writers
took concerted effort to make use of the local circumstances and issues which were then
fictionalized and incorporated gradually into the Gothic. According to Alan Lloyd-Smith,
four factors are decisive in producing a powerful American variant of the Gothic: frontier
immensities, religious intensities, isolation, potential violence, the shadows cast by
slavery and racial discrimination, and political utopianism (2004, 37). In the early years
of the colonies and the newly-born United States, the young authors had to find a
substitute for European haunted castles or landscapes as the central loci in the Gothic
fiction and they were keenly aware that they lived on the verge of a vast wilderness, a
land of threat as much as promise. The combined sense of vastness and obscurity, often
heightened by means of lights, shadows, and darkness that were parts of those mysterious
unknown regions, conveyed the same feelings of space and sight that architecture had
formerly stimulated. Many of them lived in isolation with bitter memories and fears of
Indian warfare. These living conditions led to alienation and anxiety on the part of the
early settlers. To make things worse, anxieties of the early republic and anxieties over
race, slavery, and collective violence combined to intensify their experience both as
chosen select. Critics such as Leslie Fiedler, Teresa Goddu, and Justin Edwards have long
argued for the relationship between race, slavery, and the Gothic as it developed in
America.2 The Puritan consciousness intrigued a Gothic imagination of good and evil
2
See Fiedler’s Love and Death in the American Novel, where he famously asserts that the “proper
subject of the American gothic is the black man”; Teresa Goddu’s Gothic America locates the gothic in
a “number of sites of historical horror,” especially slavery; and Justin Edwards's Gothic Passages
suggests that racial ambiguity is the driving force of the American Gothic.
7
with propensity to a sense of guilt and sin, which in turn fostered a tendency to think of
sin and virtue in terms of black and white, the legitimate kingdoms of the Gothic. From
the very moment when the European whites set their foot on North America, they were
confronted with the sometimes devastating conflict with Native Americans and the Black.
This conflict, together with fear even panic caused by it, was handy raw material for the
development of American Gothic and hence became one long-lasing and important
concern in American literature. The power of blackness, as Toni Morrison argues in
Playing in the Dark (1992), is a power of definition of the “other,” the resident
non-American whose displacement and abjection helped define the dominant whites.
American critic David Punter constructs his theory of the Gothic by building upon what
he sees as the genre's three primary concerns: paranoia, barbarism, and taboo. Fear of the
barbaric is one of the important features Punter identifies in the Gothic (1980: 405). Last
but not least, the early settlers regarded North America as a promised land, as Utopia,
where they could live a free life, and of course, make handsome profit. The idealism that
the early settlers cherished helped them overcome the countless difficulties during the
course of settlement. But the uncertainty caused by the unknown future and the nightmare
of the Old world haunted them. The collective guilt of patricide, the memory of violence
and dispossession, and the struggle for mastery of the colony, the possibility of the mob,
the danger of a collapse of the whole grand experiment overwhelmed the early settlers to
North America (Lloyd-Smith, 39). Thus, the Gothic, Americanized with these factors,
gradually accommodated in early American literature, one, as Richard Chase says,
focused on alienation and disorder (1957: 11); or in Leslie Fiedler’s words, a literature of
darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation (1966: 29).
National Identity: A Brief Review
Scholarly and critical interest in nation and nationalism was shown before 1914
largely by historians. They were mainly historians of ideas and political history. And
sporadic related researches were also conducted by philosophers and sociologists. The
8