"So rich a field of romantic incident": Disruptive Excess in Tourgée's A Royal Gentleman

Abstract:This essay explores the potential political power of Albion Tourgée's 1881 novel A Royal Gentleman. Despite longstanding critical assessments that the romantic and gothic elements of Tourgée's fiction are inconsistent with his political goals, I argue that it is indeed those elements that challenge readers to see the workings of ideology in daily life. Borrowing from a Lacanian film theory paradigm developed by Todd McGowan, I demonstrate that A Royal Gentleman encourages readers to see that the world slavery has made is a construction the novel's characters normalize through fantasy. I also consider how the novel's gothic elements disrupt readerly expectations and thus, again, call attention to ideological beliefs as constructions. Indeed, with its use of romantic excess, A Royal Gentleman may avoid some of the limitations that both the literary deployment of sympathy and realism brought to the postbellum fight for racial equality.