SOURCE: Gilmore, Michael T. “Calvinism and Gothicism: The Example of Brown's Wieland.” Studies in the Novel 9, no. 2 (summer 1977): 107-18.

In the following essay, Gilmore claims that Milton's Paradise Lost provided the inspiration for Brown's Wieland.

Charles Brockden Brown's “Gothic” novel Wieland; or The Transformation (1798) was long read as an expression of Enlightenment rationality. The author's purpose, according to this view, was to caution readers “against credulity and religious fanaticism.”¹ But the rationalist interpretation has come under spirited attack in recent years, partly as a result of a reassessment of le genre noir in general, and the Calvinist underpinning of Brown's tale has begun to gain the recognition it deserves.² Nevertheless, the misreadings persist in one form or another, and even Larzer Ziff, who properly insists that “Brown ends his journey through the mind by approaching the outskirts of Edwards' camp,” misconstrues the novel's denouement as a conventional happy...