Folklore in the works of Charlotte Brontë: a new critical approach

Feldman, Ariella (2021). Folklore in the works of Charlotte Brontë: a new critical approach. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

My key objectives are to establish a new contextual framework of folklore in the realist novel so as to widen current Gothic interpretations of Charlotte Brontë’s uses of the supernatural across her fiction, to provide evidence of local cultural and Romantic literary sources of folklore in her novels, arguing for their relevant influences on Brontë’s narrative and ideological uses, and to connect Brontë’s literary allusions to folk belief to her letters. Firstly, I establish Brontë’s local folklore milieu as a narrative source in Shirley (1849), comparing the material to historical secondary sources. Secondly, I argue for Brontë’s early adaptation of the literary antiquarian Walter Scott’s narrative and thematic uses of folklore in the Glass Town and Angria Tales. Thirdly, with Scott’s Romantic fairy tradition material as a resource, I argue for Brontë’s transformative use of the fairy motif in the study of various socio-cultural issues in Jane Eyre (1847). Lastly, I examine Brontë’s imitation and development of Scott’s rhetoric of scepticism in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830) for the study of Enlightenment Rationality and Christian truths, in relation to the ghost motif of Villette (1853).

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):