The "Wunderkammer" of Lady Charlotte Guest.
Item
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Title
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The "Wunderkammer" of Lady Charlotte Guest.
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Identifier
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AAI3103150
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identifier
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3103150
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Creator
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Obey, Erica Frances.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joshua Wilner
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Date
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2003
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Comparative | Literature, English | Biography
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Abstract
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This dissertation considers the life and contributions of Lady Charlotte Bertie Guest Schreiber (1812--1895). Lady Charlotte Guest is best known for her translation of the Mabinogion, published in 1849, which was an influence on Matthew Arnold and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as well as a significant factor in the Victorian idealization of Camelot and King Arthur. In later life, married to her second husband, Lady Charlotte Schreiber enjoyed a distinguished career as a china collector. This study considers these two disparate, but subtly similar, scholarly careers as a whole, using Walter Benjamin's theoretical discussions of translating and collecting---in particular, "Edward Fuchs: Collector and Historian." The study further attempts to place these scholarly accomplishments in the context of Lady Charlotte's continual struggle for self-definition within the strictures placed on her by nineteenth-century society, by examining the other major text she produced during her life, a journal that spanned nearly seventy years and 10,000 pages. The study concludes by examining how the objects that she collected, both as an antiquarian scholar and a connoisseur of porcelain serve to resolve the tensions in her journals between Girardian triangulation of desire and female Other-directed strategies of self-assertion.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
