A new world life: Stories of progress in the Age of Revolution

Abstract

This is a dissertation about autobiographical writing in the Revolutionary period in the Americas and Europe. A new world life explores the use of autobiographical writing as part of progressive movements and ideology during this period of historical transition toward a new world order. Anchored in the works of three canonical writers of American New World origins, the dissertation investigates how autobiographical writing used or assumed varied generic forms—e.g., the slave narrative; travel-writing; history—, a variation which reflected how specific and particular subjects engaged with the labor and goals of autobiographical writing during the Revolutionary period. Lastly, A new world life demonstrates that Revolutionary-period autobiographical writing, in cases in which it assumed an additional generic guise as slave narrative, travel-chronicle, or History, also did the labor of biographizing the New World itself, i.e., narrativizing the course of its natural and social life.