"Whatever May Be the Merit of my Book as a Fiction": Wieland's Instructional Fictionality

This paper argues that Charles Brockden Brown's didactic project in Wieland depends on a second, related project: a metadidactic critique of exemplary education. Through a reading of Wieland's intertextual engagement with Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, it suggests that this metadidactic critique clarifies the novel's seemingly ambiguous didactic project by highlighting how its didacticism depends upon its explicit fictionality. Drawing on Catherine Gallagher's work, it argues that Wieland instructs readers not by offering a model for imitation, but through the suppositional exercises inherent in reading fiction. The paper closes by exploring how Wieland's didactic and metadidactic projects inform the novel's politics.