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Romantic Anarche: The Philosophical And Literary Anarchism Of William Godwin, Jared M. Mcgeough

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study examines the philosophical and literary anarchism of William Godwin. Through an analysis of several of Godwin’s major texts, including Political Justice (1793, 1796, 1798), “Of History and Romance” (1798), and his novels Caleb Williams (1794), St. Leon (1799) and Mandeville (1817), I argue that Godwin’s relationship both to the intellectual history of anarchism and its literary expression in the form of the historical romance is more complex than has been recognized. In order to tease out this complexity, I approach Godwin from the perspective of recent critics who reread the ideals of classical anarchism through post-structuralist theory. Rather …