Secret Springs of Action: Necessity and Anglo-American Literature in the Age of Revolution

In the age of revolution (1776-1848), British and American writers were active participants in an ongoing philosophical debate regarding liberty and necessity. In this dissertation, I argue that William Godwin, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Brockden Brown, and Herman Melville, draw from and contribute to the necessitarian position in their most politically purposeful literature. The doctrine of necessity, as it has been developed by Anthony Collins, David Hartley, and William Godwin (among others), argues that all thoughts and actions are determined by prior antecedents. The British and American writers brought together in this study engage with the concept of necessity to better understand the operations of the human mind and the nature of action in relation to interpersonal and social responsibility. Further, necessity enables these writers to develop and articulate their progressive political arguments by challenging and correcting the inadequacies and inequities they find in social custom and public institutions. By analyzing a variety of genres—political lectures, essays, serial fiction, political and gothic romance novels, poetry—this dissertation demonstrates not only the profound importance but the prevalence and persistence of necessitarianism for these writers. Finally, while necessitarianism in literary studies is typically associated with the last decade of the eighteenth century, I show that the doctrine of necessity continues to play a central role in literature well into the nineteenth century.