Wieland; or, The Transformation. An American Tale, with Related Texts

• Published in: Gothic studies 2010-11, Vol.12 (2), p.84
• Main Author: Monnet, Agnieszka Soltysik
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810); Wallerstein, Immanuel (1930-2019)
• ISSN: 1362-7937; 2050-456X

The sea-change in American Studies since the advent of feminism, ethnic and cultural studies and poststructuralist theory has left Brown's marginal status more or less intact, even if there have been interesting scholars using Brown to say interesting things about the culture of Revolutionary America (e.g. Jay Fliegelman, whose introduction to Wieland for the Penguin edition was one of the best to date). Specifically, the editors present the political stakes behind the various religious movements and conflicts that are mentioned in the book, in keeping with their larger argument that cultural phenomena like art and religion are understandable as symptoms and sites of political conflicts. Besides the polemical and interesting introduction, the edition's strength lies in its well chosen background documents and their careful contextualization and explication: for example, accounts of the real murders that inspired the plot, sources relating to the German literary trends that influenced Brown, an article by Erasmus Darwin on mania mutabilis (alluded to in the novel), contemporary debates about the Illuminati and other secret societies, and an article by the German writer, Christophe Martin Wieland, who probably inspired the title. [...]the book is meticulously annotated with dense and informative footnotes.