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The Native American Presence in Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland

초록 (요약문)

This thesis aims to examine Charles Brockden Brown’s racial characterization of the antagonist Francis Carwin in Wieland; Or, the Transformation: An American Tale in terms of Native Americanness. Wieland has already been studied with academic interests in American democracy and rationalism, but those interests have seldom applied to either the meaning of racial others in America nor the dramatic function of Carwin other than that of a villain. This thesis argues that Carwin is a Native American who discloses the unsolved problem of colonization and white exclusivism on Native Americans, who had massively been misused and exploited since the Colonial era behind the scenes of the rise of America the nation. With his racial otherness suggested by his uncommon appearance and special vocal ability called ventriloquism, Carwin disrupts the life of the Wieland family, a representative of the descendants of white European colonizer, and eventually leads to their self-destruction. This thesis ultimately intends to prove that Wieland is Brown’s critique of the American society in its inception to raise the awareness of the ‘Native American question’ among his contemporaries.

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