| 2017 Drew University My dissertation attempts to fulfill a twofold agenda. First, as its title suggests, it argues for a certain kind of literature, the significance of which has been all but overlooked. For too long, literature of the nineteenth century intended for a younger audience, that which can rightly be considered the young adult fiction of its day, has been regarded as rhetorical fare designed only to divert and entertain, as mere pablum, in other words. As a result, whatever meaning it may possess beyond the literal has largely gone unnoticed. The works my dissertation focuses on, The Courtship of Miles Standish, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Little Women, may have been written for a youthful readership but in the end reveal a subtext of very adult psychological import that has profound and direct meaning, particularly for those for whom these works were originally intended: developing adolescents. For these stories have at their core the possibility for a utilitarian employment that can assist their readers in the very arduous task of growing up, most especially in achieving that which serves as the center of this dissertation: the balance between masculine and feminine sensibilities so necessary for the well-adjusted life.;In unearthing substance from the seemingly substanceless, my dissertation will also have the unintended consequence of legitimizing works that heretofore have been deemed unworthy for weighty consideration. My particular reading applies the very formidable theoretical frameworks promulgated by Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustave Jung, and Jacques Lacan; therefore, at minimum, The Courtship of Miles Standish, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Little Women must possess a thematic and rhetorical heft able to accommodate such heady conceptual application. My dissertation does just this in the hope of providing developmental guidance for a reading public just coming into its own while, at the same time, making the case for the canonization of these and other such works. |
