Knickerbocker knowledge: Mapping cultural authority in the literature of New York.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this dissertation I argue that the trope of the “Knickerbocker” has had a formative influence on the definition and development of New York literature and the particular cultural identity that such a literature portrays. Specifically, aspects of Washington Irving's fictional historian, Diedrich Knickerbocker, and his predecessors, can be traced throughout nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary portraits of New York City and its inhabitants. These continuities over time and genre reflect an ongoing engagement with the idea and terms of cultural authenticity in the city, as well as an abiding interest by New York writers in participating in, as well as chronicling, the arbitrary delineation of “society” through their depiction of its manners, customs, tastes, and members.
“Knickerbocker” is a term that has become historical shorthand in the 150 years since its inception: it is a metonym for an old-school, Dutch-descended, native New Yorker, and the qualities that may be attributed to such a person or culture. This study maps the invention and development of the landscape and iconography of Knickerbocker New York through the investigation of a spectrum of literary texts and artifacts of popular culture. Participating narratives in this project of urban self-definition and social circumscription include the writings of Washington Irving and James Kirke Paulding; mid-century literary magazines such as <italic>Knickerbocker Magazine</italic> and the <italic> Democratic Review</italic>; popular accounts of “gaslight” and “Upper Ten” Manhattan, including works from George Foster, Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Baker and Charles Astor Bristed; society newspapers and lists such as <italic>Town Topics</italic> and the <italic>Social Register </italic>; etiquette manuals and advertisements; and the “Old New York” novels of Edith Wharton, including <italic>The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country</italic>, and <italic>The Age of Innocence</italic>.
The Knickerbocker genealogy compiled by this study demonstrates how Irving's fictional narrator came to be celebrated as a powerful cultural icon and co-opted as a repository of inherited tastes, enduring values, and correct social usage. Like his name, the society portrayed in Knickerbocker's mock-epic of colonial New York would come to possess a literary life of its own.