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LITR 4326
Early American Literature Research Posts 2016 (research post assignment) Research Post 2 |
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Nathan Mesloh
Darkness Falls
Since about
halfway through high school I have absolutely loved the works of Edgar Allan
Poe. Something about his stories have always caught and maintained my interest.
But what I never did was look at his beginnings. Last semester in the American
Renaissance class I did one of my research posts on Edgar Allan Poe, and I came
across the name Charles Brockden Brown, and that he was a major influence to
Poe, so in that spirit for this post I wanted to learn more about Brown, as we
are reading one of his works late in the semester. The main things I would like
to learn are major points in his life that influenced his work most.
My first stop
was the course site page for Brown, to see the basics of his life. To start, he
was one of five brothers, and initially started out intended to be a lawyer.
From there he joined a club of progressive intellectuals which lead to his
career in being an author. This point seemed like one of the most influential
possibilities, so I found another website about this. According to it, he joined
when he was 15 years old and it was a group of eight people who met regularly,
even sometimes at the home of Benjamin Franklin. The things they discussed were
issues such as morality of suicide, imperfections of government, limits of
liberty, and possible rationalizations for lying which all seem very deep and
impactful topics for a young author. So while those are subject matter
influences, what are some of the literary influences? Who did he as an author
look up to?
Answering the
questions are that two of the authors that influenced him were Mary
Wollstonecraft and William Godwin who were the parents of Mary Shelley, who
interestingly enough was influenced by Brown to write Frankenstein. In addition
to this I also found he was also heavily influenced by Rousseau and the
epistolary form, which he used to begin publishing essays at eighteen. What I
found interesting was that he was not only such a heavy influence to Poe and
Shelley, he was also the first professional American author. As a final note,
mostly out of curiosity I wanted to know the ranking of what was considered his
best works, and from what I can tell the most popular one was his first novel,
Wieland; or, The Transformation.
To wrap up this
assignment, what I started out seeking was what points were most influential to
Brown as a writer. The answer was the club of progressive writers where they had
deep intellectual discussions. Doing so allowed Brown to learn how to critically
think about various subjects. In addition to this he was also influenced as an
author by Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, which helped him learn to
write effectively. This combination is what led Brown to give us works such as
Wieland and Edgar Huntly. I believe if I were to continue in this
research, my first step would be to read Wieland so that I can understand
how the novel itself might be an influence.
References:
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/xauthors/BrownCB.htm
http://brockdenbrown.cah.ucf.edu/biography/
http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2010/januaryfebruary/feature/our-founding-novelist
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/charles-brockden-brown
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