"What Sort of Man Was Wakefield?": Selfhood and Sovereignty in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-told Tale.

That individuals hold power and property in their own person is a core tenet of liberal philosophy, which is grounded in, among other concepts, Romantic theories of sacrosanct, interior vitality. Even so, sovereigntist thinking, particularly about human agency, nearly always fails to account for inh...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nathaniel Hawthorne Review Vol. 45; no. 2; pp. 130 - 152
Main Author: BOCCIO, RACHEL
Format: Short Story Review
Published: Pennsylvania State University Press 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        au: BOCCIO, RACHEL
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        Twice-Told Tales (Short story)
        Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864
        Sovereignty
        Free will & determinism
        Power (Social sciences)
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          Twice-Told Tales (Short story)
          Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864
          Sovereignty
          Free will & determinism
          Power (Social sciences)
      keyword:
        privacy
        Romanticism
        selfhood
        sovereignty
        surveillance
      ab: That individuals hold power and property in their own person is a core tenet of liberal philosophy, which is grounded in, among other concepts, Romantic theories of sacrosanct, interior vitality. Even so, sovereigntist thinking, particularly about human agency, nearly always fails to account for inherent inequalities and fundamental unresolved questions about how selves come to be understood as free. This essay contributes to the broader study of nineteenth-century sovereignty by analyzing a specific set of sovereigntist assumptions in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1835 short story "Wakefield." It reveals howprivacy (viewed through Wakefield's attempt to be alone) and surveillance (as the narrator's penetrating authority) operated in Hawthorne's time as bases for different varieties of people: self-sovereigns with innate ability, free agency, and determining power, and non-agential, allegorical types, those yoked to social webs and adjusted by outside forces. Making use of the unique metafictional elements of "Wakefield," the essay draws from literary criticism as it seeks to assert literature's significance within the broader, interdisciplinary study of sovereignty.
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