Title: The Construction of an Ideal Social Order: A Study on the Chivalry in Simms’s Vasconselos

Abstract: The representation of chivalry in Vasconselos by American Southern writer William Gilmore Simms, out of the cultural heritage of Middle Ages and the indigenous culture of the United States, boasts strong realistic allusions. The protagonist Philip Vasconselos’s choice of justice rather than loyalty as chivalric virtues alludes to the stance of the American South holding fast to slavery at the price of secession. His pursuit of love and home instead of expedition and treasure-hunting as chivalric paradigms gives prominence to the positive role of family in counteracting the negative influences of expansionism on society. And his identification with the Native American and his sublation of chivalry reflect the reformation of the chivalric ideal and the integration of Native American culture and the chivalric tradition by the author. The work realistically represents the complicated values of the old south, and also becomes an important cultural venue for the author to participate in the construction of American Southern Romanticism and Nationalism as well as an ideal social order for the American south.

Keywords: 19th-century American literature, chivalry, southern nationalism, expansionism, cultural integration, William Gilmore Simms

Authors: Jiexin Yi, Associate Professor, College of Foreign Languages, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou, Hunan, China; Liangdie Huang, College of Foreign Languages, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou, Hunan, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2025.01.012