Superfluous things of nineteenth-century transoceanic narratives

Abstract

Superfluous Things of the Nineteenth-Century Transoceanic Narratives proposes a transoceanic reading as a method to interpret the circulation of objects in the nineteenth-century American novel. This project extends and complicates the aquatic approach to American literary studies by putting its methodology into dialogue with material culture studies. It traces material objects in the nineteenth-century American novel to show how focusing on their interaction with literary characters changes the way we read the textual space in the novels. Superfluous Things expands oceanic studies by connecting ocean and land by directing attention to the global waterscape that extends to bays, inlets, rivers, gullies, and marshes. Although the female characters studied in this dissertation are primarily landlocked, it argues that these women continuously find alternative ways to participate in the water worlds through their use of superfluous things. The study poses the following questions: How do objects help us consider the aquatic connection in the landed environment of early American fiction? How does the oceanic framework help us challenge the spatial arrangement of female characters in marginal settings while simultaneously providing an alternate vision of American literary geographies? How do the methodologies of oceanic studies help us rethink the relationship between individuals, objects, and space? Superfluous Things analyzes Charles Brockden Brown’s Ormond, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Water-Witch, and Elizabeth Stoddard’s The Morgesons, examining the often-overlooked voices of the oceanic narratives launched from places like Philadelphia, England, Canton, China, New England, and the Philippines. Through this approach, this project reveals the interconnectedness and mutual constitution of people, objects, and spaces, inhabiting and traversing the interstices of land and water, thereby contributing to oceanic turns in American literary studies and offering an alternative method for understanding American literature in its transnational context.