| The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate the use of Anglo-Saxon romantic racial nationalism to reconstitute racial whiteness as true Americanness in representative late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States literature. The study examines the literary methodology of turn-of-the-century historical novels of Reconstruction by Southern white supremacists such as Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris, and Thomas Dixon, Jr.; works by Southerner George Washington Cable; works by Northerner Albion W. Tourgee; and works by Henry James, Jr. In order to contextualize the discussion of the authors' individual manifestations of the discourse for their specific political purposes, the study also incorporates nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon histories and pseudo-scientific treatises concerning racial qualities and categorization.;Rooted in European romantic ideas that derive nationhood from the supposed ethnic, cultural, and linguistic homogeneity of its people, turn-of-the-century Anglo-Saxon romantic racial nationalism links the continued existence of the nation to the purity of the United States' Anglo-Saxon race. Appealing to the nation's primary source of national identity, the discourse figures the nation's origin and its symbols as racial products of Anglo-Saxonism. Seeking thereby to provide an emotional link to the nation's past, Anglo-Saxonism operates in these texts as a protean mandate for each author's view of the nation's proper future. Focusing on the construction of Anglo-Saxon male whiteness as the central figure of national and world domination, this study of necessity also considers the discourse's corollary construction of feminine Anglo-Saxon whiteness, and the implicit imperative for white women to serve solely as regenerators of the race. The study demonstrates that Anglo-Saxonism functions during this period not simply as an historical concept providing a European romantic understanding of the nation's origin and character, but more as a nationalist representational strategy for various racially-motivated political agendas. |
