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“To collect, digest, and arrange”: authorship in the Early American Republic, 1792-1801

Desiderio, Jennifer A.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1092501135

Abstract Details

2004, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, English.
“‘To Collect, Digest, and Arrange’: Authorship in the Early American Republic, 1792-1801” examines the role of the author in the postrevolutionary marketplace. Early American authors often held various occupations and wrote in multiple genres, which to many scholars have made them appear amateurish. I argue, however, that it is the very range of professional identities and genres in which they worked that informs the project of the postrevolutionary author—a project which, as Crèvecoeur terms it, was “to collect, digest, and arrange” the stories, letters, and citizens of the new nation. By adopting different identities and genres, postrevolutionary authors attempted to abandon the autocratic voice of the narrator in favor of a more democratic and collaborative model of authorship. Yet, at the same time, their texts reveal a commitment to retaining the autocratic voice as a means of instructing, monitoring, and uniting their readers. I term the balancing act between these two commitments “republican authorship,” a model of authorship indebted to the tensions of the Constitutional debates. By situating these authors and their texts within the historical context of the early Republic, I show how the postrevolutionary author sought to complete the machinery of citizenship left unfinished in the scene of the nation’s founding. In my Introduction, I offer a brief analysis of the Constitutional debates and a definition of republican authorship. Chapter One reveals the connection between authorship and surveillance in Judith Sargent Murray’s The Gleaner (1792-98). While Murray performs a type of authorial espionage on her readers, I describe in my second chapter how Hannah Webster Foster in The Boarding School (1798) instructs her readers in a model of authorship that enables them to become monitorial authors themselves. Chapter Three traces Charles Brockden Brown’s gradual authorial effacement in his novels as evidence of his increasingly complex commitment to promote the reader’s involvement. In the last chapter, I argue that Susanna Rowson in Reuben and Rachel (1798) insists that the historical progress of the nation depends upon the exchange of stories. Finally, I conclude by gesturing towards the affinities between the republican and antebellum authors.
Jared Gardner (Advisor)
Literature, American
Judith Sargent Murray; Charles Brockden Brown; Susanna Rowson; Hannah Webster Foster

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Desiderio, J. A. (2004). “To collect, digest, and arrange”: authorship in the Early American Republic, 1792-1801 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1092501135

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Desiderio, Jennifer. “To collect, digest, and arrange”: authorship in the Early American Republic, 1792-1801. 2004. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1092501135.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Desiderio, Jennifer. "“To collect, digest, and arrange”: authorship in the Early American Republic, 1792-1801." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2004. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1092501135

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.