Pleyel did not scruple to regard the whole as a deception of the senses. Clara’s vacillation between supernatural and human explanations for the mysterious events occurs continuously throughout the novel and demonstrates her superstitious mentality despite her claims to rational thought. She includes the suggestion that perhaps a divine force intervenes in human affairs to punish those who violate its laws. Clara cannot fully accept an explanation that includes a human murderer or the scientific answer of spontaneous combustion. The elder Wieland’s personality is reborn in his son both Wieland men are gloomy, sober, aloof, and extremely devoted to religion. First, it sets the tone of novel by introducing a violent, inexplicable event that foreshadows the later horrors that befall the Wieland family. Moreover, as the first in a series of volumes, this volume offers, as well, a note on the principles and procedures guiding the editing of all works in the Bicentennial Edition.Was this the penalty of disobedience? This the stroke of a vindictive and invisible hand? Is it a fresh proof that the Divine Ruler interferes in human affairs, meditates an end, selects, and commissions his agents, and enforces, by unequivocal sanctions, submission to his will? Or, was it merely the irregular expansion of the fluid that imparts warmth to our heart and our blood, caused by the fatigue of the preceding day, or flowing, by established laws, from the condition of his thoughts? Clara Wieland, 18Ĭlara’s musings on her father’s death demonstrate the significance of that event to the novel. Also appended are photographs of the notebook pages containing Brown’s “Outline” of Wieland, along with our transcription of it.

Reid discusses the copy-texts for the present edition, the transmission of the texts, and the editorial decisions that have been based on these considerations. The Historical Essay by Alexander Cowie, which follows the texts, discusses the facts surrounding the composition, publication, and reception of both works and their place in America’s literary history, and the Textual Essay by S.W. Swords in New York and published there by Hocquet Caritat in 1798, and the installments of “Carwin” that appeared in the Literary Magazine in Philadelphia in 1803, 1804, and 1805. The texts are based on the first printings: the book edition of Wieland printed by T.

This first volume in Kent State University’s Bicentennial Edition of the Novels and Related Works of Charles Brockden Brown presents critical texts of Brown’s first published novel, Wieland, and of the fragment, “Carwin,” which he began in 1798 as a companion-piece to his novel.

Wieland by charles brockden brown