Pedagogies of Error: Grammar and Antebellum American Literature
Open Access
- Author:
- Hogan, Colin Peter
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- July 26, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Christopher Dean Castiglia, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Christopher Dean Castiglia, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Edmond Marsh, Committee Member
Hester Maureen Blum, Committee Member
Eric Robert Hayot, Outside Member
Carla Mulford Conklin, Committee Chair/Co-Chair - Keywords:
- Grammar
Pedagogy
Error
Antebellum Literature
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Harriet Wilson
Lindley Murray
James Brown
Goold Brown
Common School
Education
William Bentley Fowle
American Literature
History of English Language
Language Standardization - Abstract:
- "Pedagogies of Error: Grammar and Antebellum American Literature" reexamines the tradition of grammatical prescriptivism and its relationship to literature and literary style in the 19th-century United States. Whereas histories of English understand this early 19th-century moment as the final stage in the standardization of the English language, "Pedagogies of Error" argues that standardization provoked a number of reform movements that aimed to reimagine the possibilities of language. Far from a fixed system of rules and regulation, grammar continued to undergo revision as 19th-century American grammarians compiled grammatical theories from the past into new and fabulous creations. In addition to period textbooks, "Pedagogies of Error" investigates grammar’s print history, including including periodicals, newspapers, posters, and pamphlets. It pays special attention to poetry and imaginative prose, which record emerging possibilities of language. In chapters on Walt Whitman and pronouns, Harriet Wilson and verbs, and Herman Melville and adjectives, "Pedagogies of Error" theorizes literary style at the scale of the sentence.