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Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland: A Family Tragedy
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Weldon, Roberta F. |
| Copyright Year | 1984 |
| Abstract | In Wieland Charles Brockden Brown creates a family and shows how its flaws lead to its tragic fall. The elements of the novel direct the reader away from a concentration on any one character and towards a consideration of the basic unit of society, the family. Although the title character of the novel may beWieland, his tragedy and fall affect Clara, Catherine, and Pleyel and are caused partly by his family history—the tragic lives of both his father and grandfather. This perspective allows Brown to emphasize a conception of man as primarily a social being, and yet the social order in Wieland is one near collapse where the promise of restoration seems remote. Moreover, the history of the Wieland family, one of the first literary American families, with its ghastly murders and undercurrents of incest, rivals that of the most bizarre Roman tragedy and causes the Wielands to become finally not a model for emulation but a standard of failure. The nature of this family, the reasons for its failure or fall, and the tragic consequences make up the central concerns of the novel and reveal a work that, while it has at its center a strong pattern of classical allusions and resonances, uses the pattern to show that the classical ideals are ultimately flawed and not viable for an American social model. |
| Starting Page | 1 |
| Ending Page | 11 |
| Page Count | 11 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Volume Number | 12 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.gproxx.com/http://blogxd.info/dspace/uk/07-13-32.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://blogttn.info/dspace/rh/20070825.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.gproxx.com/http://blogxd.info/dspace/uk/1532055978.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1353/saf.1984.0018 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
