Recognizing Early American Literature Author(s): Robert Daly Source: Early American Literature, Vol. 25, No.

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The Round

Table

RECOGNIZING

EARLY

AMERICAN

LITERATURE
ROBERT DALY

State University of New York at Buffalo

tradition of ignor 1827, George Bancroft broke with the venerable American Elihu Hubbard Smith who began literature. Unlike In ing early his collection of American Poems (1793) with the Connecticut Wits, and Rufus Wilmot Griswold who would later dismiss "the poetry of the colo nies" as "without originality, of diction" energy, feeling or correctness a reason to had read it: American Bancroft found litera (xxviii), early ture adumbrated led up to what the literature of his own day. It somehow were for him the American in continuity classics. Bancroft believed and a thesis that would later his the inform United of History progression,
States.

This thesis has the fortunate consequence of causing one to read early American the unfortunate of causing one to read consequence literature, it only as it forecasts or contrasts with the central subject of one's investi to whose aesthetic criteria the earlier gations, the later work according be judged and, almost literature will anachronistically inevitably, be It is not surprising, then, that Bancroft concludes with found wanting. literature has continuously that American been getting the argument better and better and that, of all American poets, "Percival, Bryant, Hal are the best" (493). leck, and Hillhouse Yet we should not leap too nimbly to the conclusion that we know better than Bancroft. If we substitute our own classics for his, his argu ments resonate with a certain familiarity. Many of our best scholars and critics about the coherence of American shared his assumptions and culture, the belief that there is something about American them American that makes and that we can discover the literary works literature have

187

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188 Early American

Literature,

Volume

25, 1990

the point at which American beginnings of that essential Americanness, literature ceased to be simply a branch of English literature and became itself. From that originary moment distinctly, essentially recognizably, to for exam scholars tend such on, posit continuity. Sacvan Bercovitch, or moment sets in and the around his entitles 1630 originary ple, reading The Puritan Origins of of Cotton Mather's biography of John Winthrop the American subtitles her study of Puritan con Self. Patricia Caldwell narratives The Beginnings of American Expression. Emory El a collection of essays that focus on later American literature in American Literature. As David D. Hall observes, Puritan Influences to espouse "critics and successors have continued many of Perry Miller's a of Puritan that became the concept the basis of literary tradition version liott entitles at which American the English literature, and to search for the moment accent gave way to a distinctively 'American' voice" (198). Though many none has secured a ma have been nominated, such originary moments jority vote. the claim, belief, or hope lives on, despite cogent cri Nevertheless, Theodore Colacurcio, tiques by William Spengemann, Michael Dwight Bozeman, Philip F. Gura, and others. Gura notes both the persistence and the difficulties of this view: The most the most prob significant, and for historians undoubtedly in the study of colonial American literature in lematic, development would the past twenty years has been the reemergence?some say the be continuities the notion of profound irrational persistence?of tween early American and the classic literature of literary expression the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, and of the concomi tant belief in American both literary and cultural. "exceptionalism,"

(309)
and exceptionalism, As Gura notes, the two assumptions, of continuity are separable logically but usually linked in practice. Whatever it is that to it make is usually assumed literature continuous makes American not unlike the literature or culture of other countries, and just by naive or uninformed has argued that, in their no readers. Sacvan Bercovitch tion of New England as a new Israel, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay conflation of the secu had founded New England on an unprecedented and the lar and the sacred, the temporal and the eternal, the providential fore from their them This conflation English eschatological. separated And Andrew Del descendants. bears and linked them to their American thesis in The Puritan Ordeal runs quite counter to Berco banco, whose

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The Round Table

189

finds in the very anxiety of his vitch's confident imperialist hegemony, the nervous self-persuasion Puritans an essentially American experience, of immigrants. Though he argues cogently that the Puritans were less on an errand of England, into the wilderness than on a flight from the wilderness can still conclude of "the myth of America" that "it is pre Delbanco proprietary worry of its believers, cisely its fragility, not its audacity?the not their arrogance?that it something different has made (dare we still say, something better?) than just another version of nationalist pomp" can recognize Miller's work as both "a great (117). Though Delbanco and "an act of self-portraiture" work of the historical imagination" can see in view Puritan as imperialist "a decon of the Bercovitch's (217), struction of what appeared to the mind of the 1960's to be a pernicious national myth" and fearfully compelling (217), he still closes with an note is not American American "the distinctively continuity: loneliness" but of theme of the collective (216). And that chosenness, was the note" first American sounded Puritans, whom by "distinctively as our "to of them (whether with Delbanco parents: speak enfigures or with reverence) is still in some sense to speak of our recrimination essential (216). nativity" in New England the Delbanco argues that "we begin to recognize culture ever since" (233), and moral poles that have framed American in their that the Puritans' "turning away from all forms of mediacy" the essential thrust of Ameri relations with the divine "has constituted can imaginative expression ever since" (243). Though Delbanco believes, that establishes a continu then, in some essentially American experience literature from the Puritans to the present, he is careful ity in American to set aside at least one form of explicit exceptionalism, noting that "the messianic and furnishes element is at work in all Western nationalisms, no basis for a theory of American We share it, but we exceptionalism. no to it" claim have (251). surely special of Gura and Delbanco afford us a suggestion for The distinctions can We the of the discussion. separate questions exceptional advancing the claim for exceptionalism consider whether is ism and continuity, or even particularly American, then consider the itself at all exceptional in American literature and explore of essential continuity question William after whether, critique of it, the cate Spengemann's devastating retains literature" of American any validity or use. gory "early one might is To the first question, respond that of course America even in like other the of every country just unique, history exceptional, for Chris the world. Such claims were made for Israel in Deuteronomy,

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190 tian Rome

Early American in the Ecclesiastical bishop of Caesarea,

Literature,

Volume

25, 1990

and Vita Constantini of Eusebius History and for in the Acts and Monu Pamphili, England ments of John Foxe, long before William Bradford and others made it for Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay (Daly). "Regnum Angliae, regnum Dei est" was a commonplace it in long before Polydore Vergil quoted his Anglicae Historicae (1534), and similar claims were made by John and John Lyly (Gay). And Hugh Honour has shown that the Aylmer were made well before settle earliest claims for American exceptionalism ment by people who had not seen the place. Ifwe are to believe, then, in an essential Americanism and try to pick the time and place in which it first manifests itself, a good case could be made for England and Europe before
seems

the time of the first migrations.

to precede existence.

In this case, pace Sartre,

essence

But we need not reduce and reify such notions as Americanness. Mi chael K?mmen has persuasively that "the total constellation of argued American and its effect upon thought and action, may very attributes, well be home-grown and sui generis" but that "individual characteristics are surely not unique" and that "there are traps found among Americans ... for hunters of the scattered everywhere unique and indigenous" (15). or Without to distin American characteristic any uniquely essentially culture and literature from other cultures and literatures guish American some continuity within the family of nations and to provide between we earlier and later American are to left wonder whether there literature, is any significant connection between them. In our own time we question whether literature occurred in the seventeenth century or early American was simply invented later as part of one or more nefarious plots, to give a "usable past," to endorse American Americans and imperi hegemony for treasonous clerks. alism, to provide employment In Early American Literature for spring 1988, William C. Spengemann " enacts both the significance and the currency of these questions. We are the authors of early American literature" (90), he argues, since the cate "American literature" comprises "an invented rather than discov set of writings" (95). Spengemann points out that this category the American that "when the phrase category literature," predates "early 'American literature' entered the language, late in the eighteenth century, it designated that by general agreement did not yet exist" something gory ered

(95)
The gravamina of Spengemann's thesis are that the field is based only on a "reified idea of American literature" (98) and that "American litera ture is an institution first of all and a set of texts ... only by the way. Since decades of concerted effort by Americanists have failed to discover in English writings 'Americans' of by anything beyond the coincidence

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The Round authorial these

Table and unique obviously subject"

191 to not (99,

and language that is at once common nationality literature was of American texts, the institution ... to promote of a discovered the recognition founded added).

emphasis of advances our understanding argument significantly Spengemann's "Americans" and "American literature." Those annoying quotation marks created by us in perform a service in reminding us that these categories, or our attempts to make sense of the world, should not be hypostatized and epistemological reified. We can use abstractions categories quite well are existents. And real that without given his definitions imagining they is surely right to suggest in A Mirror for Ameri of terms, Spengemann desire for a literary history of its canists that "America's long-deferred to not own" be fulfilled is any time soon and may be very (164) likely theories of Current suggest that, in any text, intertextuality misguided. texts are no and interact. American several discourses will mix, mingle, exception. They borrow, loot, and pillage from the great ocean of world literature in which even "Americans" are awash. For that reason, trying or Ohio, to mark off a subset of literature indigenous only to America, or Doylestown is a task that will end either in failure or in self-delusion. include some of American then, must literature, Any understanding was it and is from which literatures of the other generated. knowledge Robert Scholes has put this notion in general terms: is not a pure skill but a disci in this light, interpretation It is not so much a matter of upon knowledge. pline deeply dependent a matter of making connec as a text out it is of generating meanings tions between a particular verbal text and a larger cultural text, is the matrix or master code that the literary text both depends which Considered upon The and modifies. (33) literature, then, will include writ "larger cultural text" of American literature." And outside the category of "American ings irretrievably a us in direction when he the takes suggests that step right Spengemann we widen our view to "the world of the English is at language, which once a more historical place than any Platonic idea of literature and a more literary place than either Britain or America" (163). Such a sugges tion partly frees us from the isolationism of purely "American" studies. some difficulties remain. Since the larger cultural text of Nevertheless, texts in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and include American will literature early not in far other languages, go suggestion may enough Spengemann's Itmay simply substi taking us away from our accustomed parochialism. as a ground for literature. In that case, we tute language for nation-state literatures but not Canadian, American, could have English or German

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192-

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literature Austrian, or Swiss literatures. One may ask whether grounding in language is any more necessary or less arbitrary than grounding it in we on to And if which insist fails nationality. replacing every category meet or set of characteristics criterion?a characteristic Spengemann's "at once common and unique" to the members of that set?shall we not and discourse? So far as I can seriously diminish our modes of perception not does the of his own category to meet address failure see, Spengemann his criterion. Is there "anything beyond the coincidence of . . . language that is at once common and unique to these texts" in English? Spenge mann does not suggest anything, nor does he adduce and demonstrate in En the value of his shift from "American literature" to "literature our I it in think has value studies less pragmatic making glish," though

about the ideological Still, he has raised important questions parochial. are implicated. in of all taxonomies "Americanists" which the writings we or WTien (worse yet) "early American speak of "American literature" literature," are we doing itmerely to keep our jobs, ignore the aporia of as they are? Or do we have and keep matters discourse, for claiming that "early American literature" is a worth we in Early while focus of attention, which may discuss legitimately American Literature} is to claim some thematic con One way of addressing these questions to to American argue that American writers, literature, tinuity early and
late, address common ideas or subjects. Slavery, the frontier, immigra

our hegemonic other reasons

have all been suggested, and several writ of later or literature as an adumbration of earlier. with variations) (albeit Despite thematic this notion of a defining the evident learning of its authors, literature has remained frail. And Kenneth Dauber has unity in American that our one the question addressed again, only to conclude recently one con not is Our thematic but discernible continuity epistemological. an our one tradition inexhaustible is for revisionism, appetite tinuity or we ever one more find that shall charac The chances, then, change. tion, and creeping modernism ers have seen early American later as merely a reenactment teristics "at once common and unique" to American literature seem negligible. to American litera Ifwe grant that we cannot set absolute boundaries we must cannot in it it that follow define ture, any essentialist way, does notion of early American abandon that category and with it the corollary criterion the only one by which we all and literature? Is this essentialist always recognize and use such categories? argues in The Blue Book that our tendency to posit such Wittgenstein as a essences ground for our language use derives from "our craving for in common to all (18) and our desire "to look for something generality"

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The Round Table

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subsume under a general term" (17). We the entities which we commonly common and unique essence. We might do better, rarely find any such to look for "a com argues in Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein some and criss-crossing: plicated network of similarities overlapping sometimes similarities of detail" times overall similarities, (32). These to every member of the similarities, no one of which need be common need be class subsumed under a categorical label, no one of which since "the vari unique to the class itself, he calls "family resemblances," ous resemblances of a family: build, features, colour between members in the same etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross of eyes, gait, temperament, (32). way" Such family definition, then, afford us no essentialist resemblances, but they do afford us means of recognition. We can move our conversa literature from the search for a defining essence to a tion about American of the family resemblances consideration through which we recognize texts to a from the notion of isolated American and use the category; are not at all that with of their writings intertextuality recognition of American until some American writer takes them up in the production an American theme to the text; from the search for a great common liter habits of mind, recognition of recurrent and varied epistemologies, some and other which and cultural we, Americans, ary strategies through folks in other countries as well attempt to interpret and make sense of our worlds and our lives within them; and finally, away from the notion of a great and all-powerful tradition, flowing like a river out of the past to the recognition that history and carrying us along as mere flotsam, selective always begins with us, with the living generation, who make from present to past in the generation of history. In looking connections back on Robert Lowell, for example, we can recognize the ways in which who was looking back on certain Puri he looked back on Hawthorne, tans and Pilgrims, one of whom, William Bradford, looked back on John Eusebius Pamphili, and the Book of Deuter Foxe, Socrates Scholasticus, even as Foxe and Socrates onomy (all explicitly named by Bradford), In this mode with Eusebius. themselves Scholasticus explicitly compared and little of any of recognition, we see precious few originary moments from past to present. Again and again, we see great tradition flowing of a present (the only time inwhich one can actually get any writing done) reaching back to the past for the vocabulary and grammar of their own utterance. From this perspective, we can see that Spenge mann is clearly right to argue that we create (and re-create) the category, to imply that we are literature," but he may be mistaken "early American inhabitants at all unusual in this regard. In short, through family resemblances we can recognize an early

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American literature that neither we nor anyone else can define in essen in the epistemo tialist terms; we can recognize such family resemblances American which writers attempt to make sense logical templates through can we in and examine of their worlds; the ways which these recurrent but signifi interpretive strategies afford us, not one great continuity, cant connections, nontrivial links, between earlier and later American literature. a few examples and distinctions may At this point in the conversation, the family resemblances be in order. Among by which we recognize early to its differences American from and pertinence literature, along with the later, are the recurrent call for individual and national definition, attempt to say when America did or will become a real live country, to which the most cogent answer seems to be "any minute now"; the no tion of identity as a goal rather than a given and, perhaps concomitantly, a focus on individual and collective the notion that lit self-fashioning; erature can stand in for the long archival history that America lacks and an context its alternative for culture; and intertextuality provide through us two to under resemblances which among others, may help family stand both the connections and differences between early American lit erature and later, the habit of reading nature as text or language and the recurrent focus on liminality as a central cultural condition in America and on narrative as a way of addressing that condition. in interpretive anthropology Recent work (by Clifford Geertz, Victor F. C. Wallace, among others) centers on notions Turner, and Anthony of culture that foreground epistemological templates, ways of making sense of our lives, habits of mind that may link the writings of authors same concerns. to American litera share the thematic Viewing unlikely ture in this light, moreover, enables us to appreciate difference as well as respecting their obvious differences, we can see certain similarity. While and those of such between the works of Anne Bradstreet resemblances as Emerson romantics This is not to suggest and Thoreau. American Emerson knew Wordsworth "influence" or American and "uniqueness." Puritan knew and he his forebears better than Coleridge probably and others a learned more from them. Still, he shared with Bradstreet a notion that nature is to be read for some symbolic habit of mind, cast her poetry in the lan spiritual significance. And where Bradstreet cast his in from the creatures, Emerson guage of Puritan meditations idealists. variations on the language of Kant and the post-Kantian in her "Contemplations," like Emerson, Nevertheless, Bradstreet, as an sees to nature. its and is She endurance what end questions beauty a fortiori argument for the beauty and endurance of God. Like Thoreau,

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The Round she sees nature eternities. as a hieroglyph in which

Table we may read something

195 of the

But the themes of her reading of nature are quite different from those to wed in America and elsewhere, wished of a romantic. The romantics, wrote the mind to nature as a way of seeking salvation. So Wordsworth to this goodly universe" line that "when wedded 806), (The Recluse, we should find ourselves in "Paradise, and groves / Elysian, Fortunate in more precisely Christian Fields" (800-01). put the matter Coleridge terms in Dejection: An Ode, where he wrote that "wedding nature to us the fulfillment (68-69), gives in dower / A new Earth and new Heaven" of the promise in Revelation. of the romantic argument, how the epistemology Having anticipated ever, Bradstreet rejects its central themes, arguing that to affirm our our place in nature is to affirm eternal death, and that the point of not grow young again in spring inferiority in that natural order (we do and are neither so strong nor so enduring as trees) is that we look else to our place in the supernatural where for the source of our true worth, from its Creator, and our task is to order. For her, nature is a message it. Emerson might give it a without read the metaphor hypostatizing an oversoul in which ground by arguing the existence of metaphysical but Bradstreet would retain the alterity both we and nature participate, in order to go beyond it. Both of nature, read the natural metaphor from its read the text. Bradstreet would would keep it quite distinct conflate text and Author, Author. Emerson and other romantics would insist throughout assign nature some intrinsic value. Bradstreet would that itwas to be read and her works that the text had no intrinsic worth, in her letter to her Even her own life, as described then transcended. for things beyond it: "I have children, had value primarily as a metaphor not studied in this you read ... to set forth myself, but the glory of God" (240) are thematically their writings then, they are quite different, Though are the charac congruous. The worldviews different, epistemologically criti and discourse quite similar. Cultural teristic modes of perception a on that make cism focuses these epistemological up recogniz templates resembles culture. It enables us to see how Bradstreet able American Emerson without blinding ourselves to their differences or their worth as If we view culture as a collection of separate and individual authors. or habits of mind, templates or modes of interpretation epistemological we can see family resemblances among the stylistic choices and literary strategies they foster. in many quite the case in the frequent interaction, This is especially

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different works of American literature, of liminality and narrative. In one Bradford's pilgrims stand along that of our favorite originary moments, on ac In Bradford's threshold of America. the shoreline, retrospective a the between "wild and wilderness and count, pilgrims paused savage" "the mighty ocean which they had passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all civil parts of the world" (62). Cut off a were van state in that Arnold from civilization, they Gennep, Victor a and called condition that Turner ob others have Turner, liminality, serves is "betwixt and between in successive jurai political lodgments systems" (13). Some of their successors have seen this landing as a great But Bradford's account of this moment and originary moment. is filled Free in dread. of prosecution with images of absence and England and inHolland, cultural assimilation they might also be free of any historical significance or identity. Bradford's account restored these in the context first of reformation history, then of universal providential history. His text was explicitly intertextual, linking his small group with other peo ples chosen in special seasons of God's grace. days of the Treaty of Paris and named for the father of a to sensitive to the be, Washington country yet Irving was particularly to nature of postrevolutionary and liminal America the anxiety of that In the persona of Geoffrey Crayon, he articulates that anxiety condition. and in his stories of Rip Van Winkle and Brom Van Brunt (names none too resonant of New England, Old England, or even English), he finds a way to deal with it. The epigraph to "The Author's Account of Himself" quotes John Lyly who is in the act of quoting Homer. No longer British, not yet American, Crayon will note his position between volumes of the draw and write his own volume in order to have a place. world then (11), move Van will from outcast to "one of the patriarchs of the Winkle Rip a narrator enfigured as a narration, "a chroni village" (41) by becoming " As cle of the old times 'before the war' (41). Irving's quotation marks are times the tales "twice-told" over, and his multiple many suggest, narrative frames serve as a figure for an intertextuality that draws upon texts in England, and probably Scotland, Holland, Greece, Germany, others as yet unnoticed. In Irving's "Legend" about a legend, Irving has two storytellers contest Born within for the hand of the fair Katrina Van Tassel and all the history and hope Ichabod tells stories of only one genre, cribbed from she represents. and is himself a gullible reader who tends to reify or Cotton Mather, and other abstractions. By being a better reader hypostatize metaphors and storyteller, Brom Van Brunt frightens Ichabod right out of the con and history, and goes on not only to win Katrina test, the community,

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The Round

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but also to fulfill the promise of his full first name, "Abraham" (281), a lesson for us all. Cordially dissatisfied with the culture of his own time and place, Coo per adverts in fiction to the spacial liminality of the frontier and the "This period in the his temporal liminality of the nation's adolescence: a to of in our be likened the condition tory country, may hobbledehoy we when lost the have of without selves, graces childhood, having at forms of men" that America had (368). Convinced a narrow too and view reductive of itself as merely grown up badly, with an outgrowth restore in fiction what of New England, Cooper would in had been lost of cultures that interact in his fact, the rich multiplicity tained the finished
narratives.

a selective re Like Cooper's, Hawthorne's work was retrospective, creation of past narratives for the purposes of the present. Though Haw thorne knows the facts of history, he alters them as part of his literary and cultural strategies and serves more as creator of cultural possibilities than as passive conduit of tradition. History may or may not have any it clearly does not have any but in Hawthorne existence, to earlier American independent intelligibility. He makes the connections writers, not they to him. There is no single, tidy, indigenous continuity. are quite real, explicit, and important. We need not But the connections in order to study them, but reify an abstracted American uniqueness neither should we ignore them for fear of falling into such a reification. Like some of her predecessors, Willa Cather adverts to the "middle border" or "great divide" inMy Antonia and sets in that liminal land of a culture. Again, scape an epic story of the founding and maintenance the culture derives not from an originary moment of creation ex nihilo, but from heavily intertextual narration. Her novel is an enactment of to what it purports represent, a culture founded on narrative. independent could be multiplied, these must suffice for now to Though examples in illustrate a comparatively modest attention. We need not reify an shift in for the knowable referent order to study early immediately phrase or can American with without the marks. We literature, quotation the category through family resemblances among its merely recognize many and various members. We need not posit some reductive and dis in order to explore connections among earlier Ameri torting continuity can writings and later.We can recognize those connections as made from to the past and appreciate as well as the the present the differences in the writings similarities such links they link. Finally, we can make literature for our own purposes and ourselves, studying early American some later writers who may not merely as it forecasts or adumbrates

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have shared our interest in it as a study worthy of attention. And we can remain aware, even as we recognize such categories, that others have and them will in them different cognized ways and for differ recognize ent purposes. To end on a note of mild provocation, it seems that, as long as we these distinctions and the irreducible alterity of the past, we may we In what like. the conversations of our culture, prohibitions study end discussion. occasion and substitu rarely They merely reinscription tion. Thus let it be with Spengemann. His arguments advance our com munal discussion and increase its sophistication, but they neither trun cate nor conclude it. Stephen Donad?o has argued that America is "a a into not Such need be society perpetually category coming being" (84). used under erasure and caged within quotation marks simply because it cannot be defined in essentialist terms. Though few things are ever en we can at out least let it of that particular tirely free, cage. Whatever respect America was, is, or may yet become, this is, after all, America.

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George. 492?508.

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2 used

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to

Cooper, James Fenimore. Satanstoe; or, The Littlepage Manuscripts. A Tale of the Colony. Ed. Robert L. Hough. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1962. Daly, Robert. "William Bradford's Vision of History." American Literature 44.4 (1973): 557-69. Dauber, Kenneth. The Idea of Authorship in America. Madison: Univ. of Wis
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Delbanco, Andrew. The Puritan Ordeal. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989. Donadio, Stephen. Neitzsche, Henry James, and the Artistic Will. New York:
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Gura, Philip F. "The Study of Colonial American Literature, 1966-1987: A Vade Mecum." William and Mary Quarterly. 3d ser. 45.2 (1988): 305?41. Hall, David D. "On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies." William and Mary Quarterly. 3d ser. 44.2 (1987): 193-229. Honour, Hugh. The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the
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K?mmen, Michael. People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. Scholes, Robert. Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English. New Haven: Yale Uni v. Press, 1985. Spengemann, William C. "American Literary History: Some Still Unanswered
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_A

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