Abstract
Authorship and Agency investigates the different ways that long eighteenth-century authors deployed concepts of authorship and knowledge-making that were, in part, nonhuman. From Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor to Robert Boyle, Daniel Defoe, Charlotte Lennox, and Matthew Lewis, authors were engaged with ideas in their texts that demonstrate how the nonhuman exercise agency. In this study, the nonhuman is elemental (fire), literary (texts and genres), ideological (conservatism), and animal (horses). In conversation with recent studies about the limits of the human concept and the effects of anthropocentrism and anthropocentric views, this dissertation seeks to depict and align the relationship between humans and nonhumans more accurately. Rather than an attempt to further humble humans and denounce the effects of anthropocentrism, Authorship and Agency is a demonstration of the striking, unique, and world-changing concept of authorship that produces landmark texts in various genres.
Degree Date
Spring 5-13-2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Department
English
Advisor
Rajani Sudan
Second Advisor
Tim Cassedy
Third Advisor
Beth Newman
Fourth Advisor
Jason Pearl
Number of Pages
230
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Ray, James, "Authorship and Agency: The Nonhuman in the Long Eighteenth Century" (2023). English Theses and Dissertations. 16.
https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_english_etds/16
Included in
Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons
