Wrath of Rogues: Epic Tension in the American Novel

Abstract

This dissertation proposes the development of a rogue epic strain of literature by marginalized writers in the period leading up to and beyond the Second World War. While scholars such as Georg Lukács and Franco Moretti consider “epic” as an ideology, my project draws on Ralph Cohen’s form-mode distinction to establish epic as a generic form distinguished by three narrative modes of heroics, a return home, and cultural mythology. After the Civil War, a growing cadre of writers collectively question and challenge the sociopolitical realities of experience that fail to realize the founding principles of American ideology. At this moment, the epic, it turns out, celebrates the political apparatus that denies equal protection to its citizens who must suffer the hostility of the institutions intended to shelter them. It is no coincidence that women, writers of color, queer authors, and others seek to reconsider the dynamic of epic conventions. Key authors I put forth as canonical to rogue epic are María Ruiz De Burton, Richard Wright, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude McKay, Leslie Marmon Silko, Jessie Fauset, Willa Cather, John A. Williams, and Djuna Barnes. These writers challenge classical renditions of identity that are at odds with, or otherwise not compatible in, a post-New World America. Heroics, home, and mythology do not exist in stable configurations across the cultures and identities represented by these authors, and each of these tenets are antithetical to a uniform, national ideal. It is under this arrangement that I examine how marginalized writers confront cultural realities of being and personhood, and demonstrate their vibrant engagement within an epic continuum.