This dissertation aims to illuminate divergent ideologies of literacy and personhood in the United States and England, utilizing literary and non-literary texts from the nineteenth century to shed light on the historical constraints and conventions shaping our current moment. My version of the nineteenth century is a long one, since I look at…

The myth of home is what distinguishes children's literature from adult novels (Wolf 1990). Nodelman and Reimer ("The Pleasures of Children's Literature," 2003) write that while "the home/away/home pattern is the most common story line in children's literature, adult fiction that deals with young people who leave home usually ends…

Thirty years ago, every American academic going on a research trip or a sabbatical to England carried a copy of David Lodge's comic classic, "Changing Places" (1975), which told a tale of two 40-year-old professors of English literature and two embattled campuses in the eventful spring of 1969. An ineffectual British academic, Philip…