Well, here we are, wrapping up the semester in a blog. As I look back on my periodical research, it's hard to find one strand to synthesize all the articles I found. So, I started thinking about what interested me the most.
I will have to say I was able to look with new eyes at the one journal I examined toward the beginning of the semester--the Royal American Magazine. I had devoted a blog to the rhetoric I found within the March 1775 issue. To me, then, it appeared to be merely elitist. The authors positioned extolled the virtues of rest, leisure, classical reading as opposed to the detestable habit of pursuing filthy lucre. In class, Dr. Williams pointed out to me (as I feel it should have been obvious) that this was a Tory magazine, promoting upper class English values. Now, though, I look back and wonder--how did a magazine with rhetoric like this help instigate some of the anxieties men faced in pursuing publishing for money? Even if they rejected English ideals in favor of creating an American identity, there was a sense that when strict morality (an ideal both countries shared) was attached to leisure writing, it may have been even more difficult for writers in good conscience to shed some of those preconceived notions, not to mention the ideals of manhood that the Royal American Magazine espoused.
My research interests led me several times to missionary stories over the semester. I've always enjoyed missionary stories, especially because one of my favorite books is The Journals of Jim Elliot who worked as a missionary to Ecuador in the 1950s. The journal chronicles his personal growth and development much more than it does the changes that he sees in those he preaches to. What I find interesting about the Early American Missionary Narratives is the pattern that most seem to fall into of telling the change that happened within the hearts of the proselytes. Though I recognize that this is standard, the contrast really stood out to me as I read the stories. I also recognize that I'm reading these narratives through 21st century eyes, but even so, I feel that the writers so often discredit their own ethos with fantastical stories like Reverend Henry Martin's account of the "Musselman conversion" in the Christian Watchman 1829, where the convert now speaks in near flawless English for the time and can relate the entire gospel message with very detailed theological understanding. Did readers really believe these stories? Were they inspiring? I find a story about a missionary who grows and changes himself to be more revealing and inspiring than these artificial narratives. Once again, I realize I would read the narrative differently if I were in that time period. The one that made me laugh, though, and still does, was "The Power of Prayer," a story for children found in The Zion Herald 1825 in which a group of "prayer warriors" save their ship from being destroyed by the pirates they encounter. Later, after spending years in Cuba, these missionaries are approached by the same pirate leader who has been converted because of the miraculous event. (He also can speak in "perfect" English after being in America for awhile.) To me, these narratives would seem fantastic and unbelievable to children as they grew up, possibly affecting future generations' understanding of different types of missionaries. They all seem homogenous in the early American narratives. There are no tales of medical missionaries or good will ambassadors who are genuinely concerned with the physical welfare of the people and who even try to assimilate into their cultures to help them. These types of stories are lost because of the confines, it seems, of the traditional missionary narrative genre.
Well, it's been an interesting ride. Pirates and angels and all.
1850 was long enough after 1776 to see how narratives and stories have shaped a very traditional understanding of the American Revolution. Like Foucault would say, most histories are really a story of the present. In William P. Lyon's "An Unwritten Story of the Revolution," found in the Ladies Repository: a Monthly Periodical Devoted to Literature, Art and Religion Feb. 1850, we read the tale of a woman of the present recalling an important moment, she believes, in defining American nationhood. In giving this 94 year old story-teller a voice, Lyon establishes his own rhetorical ethos. The subsequent narrative is not merely and idealized re-telling of the stories everyone in the town already knows. It is a distinctive memory from Mrs. Cornelia Beekman who has a "retentive memory" and "full exercise of her vigorous faculties."
He retells her story with all her great patriotism shining through. He first gives background to her story by telling the narrative everyone knows of Lexington and Concord, how the true Americans did everything in their power not to start war, only resisting the tyranny of Great Britain. However, when blow came to blow, they were ready to sacrifice all for their "inalienable rights." Mrs. Beekman, though, tells the story of a convention of mechanics who met shortly after the skirmish. These men relayed personal stories of how throughout the week their own tools seemed to be calling them to a greater cause. One man "with every stroke of his adze and hammer" could hear the words "Re-mem-ber Lex-ing-ton." Again and again, the mechanics would rise to speak and note how their tools sang the call against British tyranny and for American patriotism. In a grand display of national spirit, these mechanics threw their tools into a coffin and laid it in a ground, symbolically laying aside their own vocation for the more nobler vocation of war.
Mrs. Beekman notes that the crowds for this spectacle were not merely curious onlookers. No, indeed, they had come with encouragement for "the spirit of resistance." "O, there were no careless observers here!" she notes, assuredly.
The end of the piece reminds readers: "To the sacrifices of our forefathers do we owe the inestimable blessings of liberty which we now enjoy."
The rhetoric of the piece polarizes patriots and despots so that there is no nuance of disputed ideals within this small town. The people were united in solidarity, no factions. In fact Lyons says that Mrs. Beekham was old enough to see the days of "neutrality," I suppose before political factions. The earnestness of the common laborers reminds people of the present (1850) that true Americans will hear that inward voice of patriotism. It is not something they must be convinced of, but it will ring as truth to them. Any other response indicates a hardened heart. It is interesting to see the fervor of this rhetoric--11 years before the Civil War broke out.
What I find even more interesting is the poem that immediately follows this account. It is entitled "Musings" a piece by A. Bill. The poet "muses" about the course of men's lives. In life, each individual, the poet says, is guided by urgings of good or evil--angels or demons. "He seems alone, yet moves not alone, whersoever he goes. Legions of spirit hover in his path." The poem draws a readers' attention back to the almost supernatural leading of the mechanics to the war. The men were not acting as individuals, but as vessels, moved by the good forces of the earth. The poem also says that "There are no little things." Each person, regardless of status--(even the lowly mechanics) are the small pieces of dust of the earth that form the great sands, the poem says in metaphor. It is a reminder that to do great things, you only have to be small and follow the leading of the good, spiritual forces guiding you or else your would will be plagued by demonic forces and "sin...will creep, like serpents, all along the track of man's sad journey to the grave."
He retells her story with all her great patriotism shining through. He first gives background to her story by telling the narrative everyone knows of Lexington and Concord, how the true Americans did everything in their power not to start war, only resisting the tyranny of Great Britain. However, when blow came to blow, they were ready to sacrifice all for their "inalienable rights." Mrs. Beekman, though, tells the story of a convention of mechanics who met shortly after the skirmish. These men relayed personal stories of how throughout the week their own tools seemed to be calling them to a greater cause. One man "with every stroke of his adze and hammer" could hear the words "Re-mem-ber Lex-ing-ton." Again and again, the mechanics would rise to speak and note how their tools sang the call against British tyranny and for American patriotism. In a grand display of national spirit, these mechanics threw their tools into a coffin and laid it in a ground, symbolically laying aside their own vocation for the more nobler vocation of war.
Mrs. Beekman notes that the crowds for this spectacle were not merely curious onlookers. No, indeed, they had come with encouragement for "the spirit of resistance." "O, there were no careless observers here!" she notes, assuredly.
The end of the piece reminds readers: "To the sacrifices of our forefathers do we owe the inestimable blessings of liberty which we now enjoy."
The rhetoric of the piece polarizes patriots and despots so that there is no nuance of disputed ideals within this small town. The people were united in solidarity, no factions. In fact Lyons says that Mrs. Beekham was old enough to see the days of "neutrality," I suppose before political factions. The earnestness of the common laborers reminds people of the present (1850) that true Americans will hear that inward voice of patriotism. It is not something they must be convinced of, but it will ring as truth to them. Any other response indicates a hardened heart. It is interesting to see the fervor of this rhetoric--11 years before the Civil War broke out.
What I find even more interesting is the poem that immediately follows this account. It is entitled "Musings" a piece by A. Bill. The poet "muses" about the course of men's lives. In life, each individual, the poet says, is guided by urgings of good or evil--angels or demons. "He seems alone, yet moves not alone, whersoever he goes. Legions of spirit hover in his path." The poem draws a readers' attention back to the almost supernatural leading of the mechanics to the war. The men were not acting as individuals, but as vessels, moved by the good forces of the earth. The poem also says that "There are no little things." Each person, regardless of status--(even the lowly mechanics) are the small pieces of dust of the earth that form the great sands, the poem says in metaphor. It is a reminder that to do great things, you only have to be small and follow the leading of the good, spiritual forces guiding you or else your would will be plagued by demonic forces and "sin...will creep, like serpents, all along the track of man's sad journey to the grave."
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Though by now it is not news to me, I continue to pause and remind myself to remember how cyclical history is. I imagine that when I first really studied women's movements and early feminism, I saw the movement as linear, forward, progressive. If there were women who stood out, like a Sappho, a Lady Montague, or a Mary Wollstonecraft, they were an exception, used as models for women in the future. Yes, I had heard of feminist backlash as well, supposedly living its hey day in the 1990s. Still, I suppose I always thought one small step back, two large steps forward really defined the women's movement throughout time (if you will allow me to make it that broad.)
Once again I am reminded, though by Joanne Dobson and Sandra A Zagarell's chapter "Women Writing in the Early Republic," that progress is definitely not linear. Neither is it inevitable. These writers explain that though "by 1840 American women were much more securely positioned to partake of the multitudinous opportunities...the discourse of domesticity, prevalent but not hegemonic in the postrevolutionary decades, coalesced in the emerging Victorian identification of women's proper sphere with the home and its concerns" (366). I don't believe there is anything anti-progressive about women turning to the home and its concerns, yet it seems that the rhetoric of "domesticity" during this time, by both women and men, not only limited women's agency but also established the domestic as second rate to the masculine public sphere.
If women like Mercy Otis Warrnen, Sarah Wentworth Morton, and Judith Sargent Murray capitalized on their opportunities between 1790 and 1840, what was the rhetoric that silenced women in the following decades? I suppose here is where research in these early American periodicals will be very valuable. The change obviously did not happen overnight, so while these women may have been successful during the early republic, they were competing with strong voices attempting to relegate women to the moral, domestic realm of the home. Who may have been the other voices supporting women like Morton who said that "an author should be considered of no sex...the individual must be lost in the writer"? (qtd. in Dobson and Zagarell). Why were they unsuccessful?
This type of study is not only interesting in order to see how history allowed the "gender codification" of writers during the early American years, but it is also interesting in light of the way rhetoric still works. As I said at the beginning of this blog, history is cyclical. We cannot assume a linear, progressive model of equal rights for men and women. There is the possibility that the voices engaging in dialogue today want to codify roles for individuals based on gender, race, class, political party, religion, etc. If we identify ourselves with a certain group of people or several groups of people, or even if we like to have fluid identities, shifting from one group to another, we should be aware at how labels and codes can define entire generations and can make or break the opportunities we have for expressing and living out our values.
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What is masculinity in America? This is not a question I have ever explored on its own. I have thought about masculinity as a "norm" off which femininity or woman-ness is defined. Simone de Beauvoir describes women as "the second sex" as if women understand their identity as a departure from men. However, is this fair? Though her theory is much more complex than I am giving it credit here, I was reminded that "masculinity" too is a construct rather than a norm. Men and women have constantly challenged and redefined it. My question is--what were the effects of the way American men after 1840 defined "masculinity"?
David Leverenz in "Men Writing in the Early Republic" argues that male writers were considered (or considered themselves) effeminate or de-masculated as writers and sought for ways, primarily fatherhood and having children, to rid themselves of the stigma. Often we think of women who chose to be mothers because that was the expected role for their femininity. We look back on history and bemoan their lack of access to education and opportunity. Leverenz indicates, though, that the prominent book writers of the early national period were equal male and female. Opportunity for equality between the sexes was not the issue. What type of opportunity and how this opportunity identified one was the larger issue. Though Leverenz does note the "market-driven aspects" of "authorial anonymity," he argues that authorship was linked symbolically to virility and fertility (352). I'm wondering why, if the word "author" reflected the idea of "one who brings or causes to come forth" was it not considered more masculine in book writing. Was a book more like a child who came forth from the womb? Thus, a man of ideas is a true author. A producer is merely giving birth to a form. These sexual connotations are very confusion, creating questions for me about power in sexuality. There is our cultural narrative that the sperm is active and and egg is passive receiver; yet, when we think about the birthing process, the woman is definitely more active than the male. I'm wondering if these ideas of sexuality were the same in this time period and if it effected the symbolic action of producing literature.
(Just another note to go along with sexuality and metaphors: Leverenz notes that Irving felt a sense of a "lack of manliness because he had not married and established a family" and that he "blamed his wandering imagination" (354). This description makes me think of that idea of the "wandering womb" associated with female hysteria. I wonder if men were afraid of being charged as hysterical because of their imaginative productions.)
It is also interesting that the male writers who did redefine masculinity, redefined it in terms of death and anxiety. Really, the ideas seem rather modern. When I think especially of Frederick Jameson's understanding of postmodernism, particularly in film, I see the same problems of masculinity and the same solutions: "death, depression, defeat, and the prospect of leaving no mark in history" (361). In some ways, while this solution may not appear to be patriarchally oppressive, I believe it has hindered progressive thinking even today, when we think about masculine films such as Fight Club, any Tarrantino film, or even comic books adaptations like Batman. The lone ranger, the depressed, lost man searching for his manhood through violence and death rather than cooperation and community has plagued our society for a long time now. I don't have a lot of time to develop this idea, but it would be interesting to see how this form of "male hysteria" has influenced American culture and has turned women (the original producers of hysteria) into scapegoats for this de-masculinity.
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I chuckled a little when I got to the second page of Andie Tucher's chapter "Newspapers and Periodicals." He says that "political reporting" in our nation's early history was not as we understand it today. Instead it was "political argumentation, advocacy, and attack" (390). I'd love to know where I could find some political reporting as we should know it today.
I find it interesting to think that the same time of attacks and argumentation that we see today in the news defined much of the political news during the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson.
Tucher also notes that the newspaper played another vital role for readers, other than offering politically charged perspectives. he says that some newspapers were attracted to "the idea that readers might benefit from the straightforward presentation of original information" (394). He uses the example of the National Intelligencer to show how newspapers were able to accomplish this feat. However, even in describing how this periodical under the editorship of Samuel Harrison Smith gave Americans nearly direct access to political debates, he reminds readers that it was still a Jeffersonian paper. I still wonder, then, when can a paper claim to offer "straightforward presentations of original information?" Could there be better examples? I have trouble believing that any news is unbiased which unfortunately, as I have mentioned before, has prejudiced me against "news" in general. I realize every time I am absorbing information that I am absorbing information through someone's lens. I have a hard time believing I even make informed decisions on my own. In some way, someone's rhetoric is influencing me. There comes a point when I have to choose who I will believe, and that is usually not based on any neutral facts.
I suppose periodicals/newspapers that would interest me would be ones that allow multiple perspectives. I realize this may be tough or perhaps impossible to accomplish. Still, the format of a periodical does not necessarily confine it to one ideology. At this point in the American nation it seems that the editor and/or printer had most of the control over a periodical's ideology, and Tucher reminds us that the economic patronage from political parties contributed to this locus of control. I suppose the same is true today, as businesses rather than one single editor often control the ideology of periodicals.
Still, it is interesting that the format itself opens itself up to multiple perspectives if a group of people chose to use it accordingly. Tucher cites men like Daniel Webster who "expressed the hope that the newspaper press would unify a diverse and scattered people" (395). While I buy the conclusion that economic problems ultimately caused the disaster of this ideal, I think that perhaps the emphasis placed on knowledge, specifically objective knowledge makes that "theater of intellectual operation" that Webster describes unattainable. Today, people still grasp for that straightforward truth, that objective knowledge. I have come to the conclusion that with politics, it does not exist. Instead, where I find the most productive "knowledge" is in hearing multiple voices. I'm not looking for one voice to win me over (although on occasion that may happen.) I'm looking for how I can develop a collaborative understanding of what ideas will work best by seeing how many ideas collide and produce a layered type of knowledge. With a layered knowledge, there would be more discussion, collaboration, and compromise because people would agree that there is no one absolute right choice. The right choice will be constructed. Now, this would not get rid of disagreement or bring perfect unity in any way, but it might relieve some of the problems with news today and the divisions I believe that news, just like in the early American years, has helped promulgate.
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In my search to find what the early American periodicals had to say about ghosts and devils, I found two strains of thought dominating the conversation on such issues--debates about the reality of such beings and strong Christian rhetoric concerning the souls of the lost. In two stories I read in what I think to be secular periodicals, the ghost story is told with enough suspense to capture the readers' attention only to offer a twist ending that explains the presence of the ghost rationally.
One, "An Apparition" from Weekly Visitor or Ladies' Miscellany, July 30, 1803, tells the story of a young gentleman named Barbarosse who lived in France. After he has spent time with a family singing songs and listening to supernatural tales, he returns to his chamber for the evening...after midnight...and is disturbed by strange sounds and the appearance of a black robed stranger, he assumes to be a ghost. After being sent into convulsions, he realizes in the end that he had merely forgotten to shut a window and the ghost was only a black game cock.
The writer starts off rather tongue in cheek, saying, "Let the unbelieving skeptic say what he will concerning the reality of ghosts and apparitions...a man who doubts as to his own personal existence...cannot be expected to have faith in the more abstruse secrets of nature." He then dismisses those "skeptics" and invites the true "believers" to listen to the tale and come to assurance of the veracity of ghosts. Since the tale is obviously a spoof on ghost stories, the writer has no intention of claiming the veracity of ghosts. However, the language he uses against so-called skeptics (I am assuming he is one himself) is similar to the language I found about devils and ghosts in the Christian magazines.
Several pieces in a periodical called The Experienced Christian's Magazine and The Christian's Magazine discuss the battle for the soul that exists between angels and demons or spirits in general. Life here on earth is bound up in the state of the spiritual realm rather than the physical realm. I would assume that this debate over the veracity or truth of spirits was in large due to the beginnings of scientific reasoning and skepticism about faith and spirituality. Even in the language of the ghost story that doesn't even mention Christianity, I see an attack on what many who considered themselves more enlightened thinkers saw as silly or blind faith in the supernatural.
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I knew someone in this class would be interested in children's literature! Thanks, Kandace for your post. I, too, have taken a couple of children's literature courses. One course was actually completely focused on British children's literature, and the other introduced me more to children's picture books rather than novels.
Gross notes that children's books in the mid-eighteenth century developed based on parents' desires to offer instruction in imagination, information, and morals (30). How might these children's books differ from English children's books, I wonder? Did children's books contribute to the call in the 1830s to establish a real national literature? As a child, reading books like The Secret Garden and Little House on the Prairie, I never really thought of either book according to its author's nationality. I do believe that children's identities are shaped by the books they read, but I'm not sure to what extent their sense of "national" identity is shaped. In both those books, as well as my favorite Little Women, as I have mentioned, I was transported to other worlds, whether they be in a mystical garden in Kent, England or the wild, Midwest of America or Concord, Massachusetts. These places all became familiar to me, though they were not my own.
Gross highlights in this introduction the great diversity within the early republic created by the separation of region and space. He says that this distance and localization of the press contributed to an "increasing familiarity" which "bred growing conflict," while still creating a more democratic reading public (only to a certain extent, as Larisa points out in her blog.) I wonder, though, how looking at the development of identity of characters in children's books might affect the way even the regions developed their own identities. I got a good dose of the Yorkshire dialect in The Secret Garden without even knowing what I was reading at the time. I knew these characters were different than me--from a different time, place, culture--yet, I could see through their eyes as I read. A part of me may have grown to appreciate the simple, nature loving family in the book as representatives of the whole Yorkshire community. I wonder if this was happening, intentionally or unintentionally, in American book culture in the early republic. Of course, the idea of regionalism and the technique of writing in the regional vernacular became even more popular in the late 19th century with writers like Mark Twain, but what were children being trained to think about their nation or their region at this time? Did a child from the south read about life in Boston as being as foreign as life in London? Were children being trained to respect and reify regional differences through literature? Just some interesting thoughts that could be explored if we studied more of the children's literature from this early national period.
Just out of curiosity, I did a basic google search for Sandford and Merton and read the short synopsis of it on wikipedia. Of course, I would do more thorough research if I were really critically studying the book, but I was was reminded how children's literature is often so tightly bound to a social, moral code. Davidson made arguments that the novel can be subversive becomes it responds as a voice, as a perspective, not necessarily represented by the government or the Constitution. How could children's books, then, not just deliver moral messages, but be subversive as well? Would it depend on who was reading, again, like Davidson might say? Gross sees the children's novel as existing within the dictates of mainstream American morality. But what determined morality? Gross says that many parents were influenced by Lockean ideas of education, but this popular book by Thomas Day was influenced by Rousseau (according to wikipedia). Perhaps even in children's literature, there were multiple voices, competing with each other and constructing new ideas of morality. Children's literature seems to be an excellent, almost innocent genre in which to explore these questions, quietly under the guise of imaginative literature.
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Do forms/genres have ideology? Dallas Liddle echoes Davidson's argument in his work The Dynamics of Genre in which he says that the genre in which an author chooses to write carries a more fixed ideology that the author who writes. The author, in fact, may change perspective, tone, and seemingly even his/her beliefs depending upon what genre he or she writes in. When I first heard this idea, I wasn't sure if I could accept it. Don't ideologies/belief systems originate in people? Yet, as Cathy Davidson writes about ideology and genre, I begin to see more clearly how the novel form lent itself to certain presuppositions of its readers before the content was even digested. Those in the early national period were attacking the novel, not necessarily the specific authors.
Do we do this today? I think of movie genres--Romantic Comedies, Art films, Dramas, Historical Fiction. What do we expect out of each one? Do we automatically think that a period film about Mary Queen of Scots is of higher quality than another Sandra Bullock movie, built around the ubiquitous "meet cute" plots (Roger Ebert's affectionate term for many romantic comedies)? Do we miss opportunities to discover where beliefs are being challenged or re-ified simply because we do not give credit to a certain genre?
Davidson thinks that the novel was actually given much credit which is why there was so much uproar over it. What in our day is like the novel? What causes uproar in the same way the novel did? or is our society so full of diverse and competing genres that the same type of response to a genre would likely not be repeated? Do the small factions of society who put up a fuss over trend like Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code because of religious reasons carry the same persuasive power that the preachers in the early national period did? What are our most effective pulpits today?
One thing I wonder about today in the same way I suppose people wondered back in that early period of our country--Will people think for themselves or will they be constantly moved by the literature that dominates the society? I was having a conversation with someone about this concept of "ideology," wondering if we can ever distance ourselves as an objective viewer of even our own ideologies. Though it is hard to see a situation in which one could be a disinterested critic of his own views and the views of others, I still see that there is a need for critical evaluation. The problem comes when we try to decide on what grounds we will make our critical evaluations. Davidson reminds us that even as the grounds the aesthetic value of literature changed as books became more available to the public, the grounds on which one evaluated their social value could change too. Is this something always in flux, I wonder? We may be foolishly convincing ourselves that standards for good literature or profitable literature exist when really we are constantly changing these; in fact the production of literature and the creation of genres, if we look through Davidson's lens, significantly affect these changing standards.
I like standards, but with literature, I think that standards and criteria must always be contextual and flexible in the face of economic and social changes. When we learn how to critique, though, based on our socially constructed standards, I think this gives us more agency for producing works which will continue to move, inspire and change. Criticism and evaluation should be a dynamic rather than static, retrograde process.
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There was a Gilmore Girls episode where Rory, the main character, is so swamped by schoolwork her first semester of college that the papers she writes for her classes start spilling into each other. Her guidance counselor advises that she keep each subject separate rather than trying to get one idea to do "double-duty." This episode struck me because I was still in high school at the time and I had this great fear that what I was learning in one class would spill over into another class and I would receive the same reprieve. Why did it make me so nervous?
Well, as Davidson talks about how readers in the Early National American period read, I can't help but think that the importance of one text on a person could be greatly influenced by what other texts that person was reading around the same time. Ideas are often juxtaposed with each other in very unnatural ways in our education and individual learning processes. I remember reading Frankenstein for the first time during the same semester I was taking a Childhood Development course, and I nearly pulled a Rory Gilmore, trying to analyze Frankenstein's monster as a model of linguistic development. Really, though, I find myself creating knowledge in this manner all the time. We just read Starr and now we are reading Davidson. Putting those two books side by side in a course will always leave me with certain ideas about American exceptionalism when thinking about this period of history and how we develop histories.
What would be interesting, I think, is to look at how texts, being read at the same time, were in conversation with each other, perhaps creating little Frankenstein monster ideas of their own. What was that one man reading in the novel, listening to in a sermon, and scanning through in a newspaper? How do all these ideas from different sources of knowledge come together to create new knowledge? While Davidson is looking primarily at the novel being a "subversive" form according to a Bakhtinian understanding of prose fiction which incorporates many voices, it is interesting to think about how the external non-fiction related to the prose fiction and may have created contexts for knowledge in different ways. This is one of the benefits of doing the periodical searches. I would find it interesting to read a novel published during a certain year and read the non-fiction that was published around it. How would that context influence the reading of the novel as well?
(Forgive me for any incoherence as my head is quite clogged with the residue of the flu bug I've been fighting.)
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Cathy Davidson's perspective, or perspective(s) on American literature definitely contrasts so much with Starr's that I was wondering if I was reading about the same nation's history. While Starr attributes the success of print culture to the unique structure of America's government that encouraged free speech and open thought, culminating in documents like the Constitution, which represented the the country's collaborative efforts to ensure political freedom, Davidson sees the novel as a genre that acted as various types of counterargument to the selective, exclusive documents of the fledgling country. She believes that by uncovering the novel and the way
the novel was disseminated and read, we may get greater insight into the voices that have been erased or excluded from the standard narrative history of our country.
the novel was disseminated and read, we may get greater insight into the voices that have been erased or excluded from the standard narrative history of our country.
As I think back on my own introductions to American history and American literature, I tried to remember what narrative I learned in school. It seems so long ago now, and I wasn't thinking very critically about the information I was processing to get an "A" on my tests. However, certain points that Davidson raised reminded me of various truisms I had heard in my own education. Yes, Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales were the definitive novels of the time. We learned that not only did they capture the spirit of America, but they also showed how the true American could assimilate well into a land once controlled by Native Americans. Natty Bumpo or Deerslayer was the ultimate expression of an true wilderness man, proving that Americans did indeed value the land and were perfectly capable of being friends with the Native Americans. The "bad guys," though white, are found out to be both European Americans and pirates, so their evilness is explained because they do not understand the true American spirit. However, the real lesson learned from Deerslayer was that early Americans loved dense description because it reminded them of the dense forests they had yet to search through. Every word was a little discovery. We even wrote a descriptive essay based on the book. These are the lessons I remember from reading only the snippets of Deerslayer we were assigned in ninth grade.
I also vaguely remember a picture of the Boston massacre from our history textbooks which I believe looked something similar to the one I found for this blog post, in which the heroes look strangely upper class and white, which is far different than Cathy Davidson's reminder that John Adams described them as "negroes and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jacktars." I never really thought about her point, until reading this introduction that once the Boston massacre became a symbolic moment of patriotism, the event was "whitened up."
I also remember talking to my dad about pride in being an American. I still like to talk to him about this issue, because he would proudly say that, though American has had it's problems, it is the greatest nation on earth which is why everyone wants to immigrate to our country. He's not anti-intellectual either. He was a history buff growing up and still is--soaking in any documentary from any perspective he can find. It makes me realize that it is easier to critique American exceptionalism within the context of Academia, yet outside of academia, a sustained critique of our country and its history will often agitate people like my dad, who sees that type of analysis as "un-American" or unappreciative of the many blessings we have been given, despite the problems (like slavery) we've had along the way. It might be interesting to invoke some Rogerian argument in these discussions--try to understand both sides of the issue to come to a better understanding of what being "American" means.
However, Davidson is talking to academics in American literature, primarily. Yet, even in her experience, she is seeing resistance to new discoveries about the novel because it breaks down the facade of stability many see in the canon and narrative of American literature that has already been established. Not being an Americanist, in the field of literature, I remember being handed a Norton Anthology of American literature when I was teaching at a community college and being told: "Go." While the anthology seemed more inclusive of diverse perspectives I had never discovered myself, I found myself drawn to the traditional authors when creating my syllabus. I sprinkled the course schedule with some settlers, puritans, founding fathers, a little Hawthorne, a little Poe, a little Dickinson, and of course everyone's favorite--Emerson. However, I did give one project in which the students could pick any author in the entire anthology, do a little research and present information to the class. I was shocked at what I was missing out on and amazed at student's response to authors like Fanny Fern (sadly a figure I had not been introduced to before that class) and Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and Obijway poetess. In fact, I remember specifically my student, a retired military officer, who had lived in a small town where the Schoolcraft lived, grow completely enamored with her life story and the history of the Obijway people after doing that project, even looking in to present day problems.
Since then, I haven't returned to early American literature, but I agree with Davidson. There is a rich field to explore, a field of voices that will give us a better picture of what being American means, what it meant to many people in the past, and how we can affect current policies when we better understand our diverse history.
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I decided use "wife" as my search term, and I ran across an interesting poem in the March 1775 edition of "The Royal American Magazine: Or Universal Repository for Instruction and Amusement." The poem was sandwiched between other poems, a position which prompted me to look at the periodical as a whole, to place this poem in the context of what this periodical was trying to achieve.
The blog opens with an address to its subscribers who are named as Gentlemen. It seems that the articles and poetry in the periodical about women, then, are addressed to men, specifically gentlemen, probably of upper class, considering the title of the periodical is The Royal American magazine.
The very first article that appears is on called "On Pleasure" immediately followed by a quote from Alexander Pope: "Pleasure, if wrong, or rightly understood, our greatest evil or our greatest good." This opening article, along with the quote and the subtitle of the periodical indicate that the pursuit of man is pleasure, but it can be a good or bad pleasure. If women are included in a man's pleasure, he must be instructed whether he is withdrawing the correct form of pleasure from a woman. The primary article explains that while it is right for a man to pursue pleasure, a wise man will pursue a pleasure that leads to greater morality and intelligence rather than sensual gratification.
I find this interesting counsel interesting in light of the direction periodicals would take in the next century. Though Starr often associates higher literacy with the rise of available print culture, he also notes that this literacy was often accompanied by a ravenous appetite for sensation stories--scandalous news and fiction. This periodical precedes this stage and seems to hope for a more cultured pursuit of pleasure.
The next article continues the theme of pleasure, reiterating that the ultimate end of man is his happiness. This article (actually in the form of a letter) expands upon the first by exhorting men to find their happiness in "God, who ordereth everything for universal good." In the following pages, one finds that happiness is found in the idyllic country, in rest, in leisure to study the classics--all luxuries of the elite, even though from the beginning readers are told happiness comes apart from circumstances.
After a few letters to the editor, there comes a story, based on the introduction, intended as a moral story. Yet, I wondered, if this periodical is for men, what would interest them in "The Wife of Ten Thousand: A Moral Tale?" ah, but then I saw. The husband (who ends up giving bad advice to his wife on how to manage her house) was a man of money. He was a man whose "prevailing foible was to want to life like a man of quality." It seems to be a recurring theme throughout this periodical to distinguish between a man of moral character and a man who loves money. The periodical continues to neglect that its audience is probably much wealthier than most Americans in order to have the leisure and the classical background to understand the allusions within the fiction. It makes me wonder if some of the assumptions that we make in looking back on the period--about the democracy and egalitarianism of America was artificially created by rhetoric like that found in this particular journal, for it seems that the men reading (and contributing) must feel that they are nobler and more moral than the men of luxury they decry.
I want to get to the original poem I found, but I want to mention that in line with this theme of a constructed American identity, valuing simple morality and intelligence for all over rich excess, there is a poem that precedes the wife poem called "A Lady Recovering from Small-Pox," which indicates that the woman was quite greedy and enamored by luxury when she was suddenly overwhelmed with the disease. Interesting moral there.
But here is the poem that instructs men, as sensible and moral, to choose a wife for their pleasure. In "The Choice or The Model of a Wife," the woman is to be "virtuous" and "beautiful." She is to have a good "form" as well as "mind." Her "virtue" (ahem metaphorically) shall arise from her "breasts." She is to have "endearing sweetness, devoid of pride." Even though he wants her to have a good mind, she should not be talkative: "without loquacious wisdom wise..." avoiding "tattling" and "slandering." After all this she should be able to see her own faults (though I'm not sure which she's allowed to have at all). However, she must be able to overlook others's faults (I'm assuming those of the man speaking in the poem.) In fact, she knows how to "appease" her provoked husband, if necessary as she is his "healing balm" who can sooth his passions.
I believe this journal is an interesting example of how the a nation can begin creating its identity through print. Literature, as Klay notes in his blog, is so important to the formation of a society's beliefs and actions. Though it is not a linear process, from print to action, what we read, what we accept, what we write, all contribute to our worldviews and even the myths we continue to propagate. Studying literature, even looking at a periodical with relatively obscure poetry, helps us see how instrumental fiction and non-fiction is in creating identity and ideas.
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Brief note on my reading: As I'm reading this text, I'm also reading English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Pub. Unfortunately, I seem to be a naturally linear thinker, and keeping track of historical progress gets difficult as dates seem helpless strewn from page to page of two different books. As a reading practice, whenever I read historical pieces I try to re-outline dates in a Word Document so I can see the chronology that I'm reading more clearly. I think it is important to understand dates not in order to set up a rigid understanding of the order in which certain events take place, but it helps me not to make false assumptions about what may or may not be happening at the time. For instance, Starr uses this strategy--presenting a timeline of American political history alongside a timeline of American print advances--in his defense that American print culture grew as a worldwide force, not because of technological advances, but rather because of social and governmental uses of print for various reasons. What will be interesting if I finish both outlines, complete with the respective author's conclusions about what the dates mean, is to see if the ultimate arguments of the books stand. I'm thinking there may be some discrepancies considering the decidedly British focus of Richard Altick's book and the decidedly American focus of Paul Starr's book.
Alas, I have not finished my outline, yet, but I hopefully I will finish both. Priorities in writing assignments often keep me from making the printed notes I always have high hopes of making.
One point Starr makes in Chapter 2: New Foundations piqued my interest. I wrestled whether or not to label his evaluation of Puritan contribution to literacy, traditional or subversive. I suppose in the current climate of literary studies, it would be considered subversive. Most teachers of Puritan culture and literature capitalize on instances of their intolerance and hypocrisy at the expense of their contributions. Starr explains that the Puritans set a precedent for education in the colonies that was not seen elsewhere in French or British societies. He even highlights that female literacy rose in the New England society because of the effort to extend literacy outside of class hierarchies (which would include gender privilege to some extent as well.)
Being a fan of the collection of Puritan prayers Valley of Vision, I appreciated Starr's concession that the Puritans were a positive influence on the growing literacy in the country, despite many of their confirmed in-egalitarian practices. It's interesting, though, that Starr sets Puritan literacy practices in opposition to the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia colonists' ideas concerning print. In this way, he champions the often derided Puritans for being more progressive than those of Chesapeake Bay who shut down printing presses and had no booksellers.
On the other hand, I feel that Starr unjustly tips the scales in favor of the Puritans over the Quakers as he relates the progress (or lack of) print production in the Middle Colonies. Having a limited knowledge of the Quakers and their role in education and abolition movements later in the 19th century, I wonder how Starr can so easily say that they followed a "pattern in print communication that was surprisingly closer to the Chesapeake's regime than to New England's" (54). While I have no positive proof to refute his short example of Quaker intolerance toward publishing, I would like to see perhaps a more engaged look at what type of print culture and education Quakers did offer. Like the Puritans, or any religious group, there will most likely be forms of suppression of ideas for the sake of each religion's pursuit of truth and integrity. However, Starr only gives an example of how the Quakers prohibited Bradford from publishing certain material. He failed to give any other examples, though clearly there were materials being published to increase literacy and knowledge. I'd like to see more study done on Quaker education and publication at this time.
Alas, I have not finished my outline, yet, but I hopefully I will finish both. Priorities in writing assignments often keep me from making the printed notes I always have high hopes of making.
One point Starr makes in Chapter 2: New Foundations piqued my interest. I wrestled whether or not to label his evaluation of Puritan contribution to literacy, traditional or subversive. I suppose in the current climate of literary studies, it would be considered subversive. Most teachers of Puritan culture and literature capitalize on instances of their intolerance and hypocrisy at the expense of their contributions. Starr explains that the Puritans set a precedent for education in the colonies that was not seen elsewhere in French or British societies. He even highlights that female literacy rose in the New England society because of the effort to extend literacy outside of class hierarchies (which would include gender privilege to some extent as well.)
Being a fan of the collection of Puritan prayers Valley of Vision, I appreciated Starr's concession that the Puritans were a positive influence on the growing literacy in the country, despite many of their confirmed in-egalitarian practices. It's interesting, though, that Starr sets Puritan literacy practices in opposition to the Chesapeake Bay and Virginia colonists' ideas concerning print. In this way, he champions the often derided Puritans for being more progressive than those of Chesapeake Bay who shut down printing presses and had no booksellers.
On the other hand, I feel that Starr unjustly tips the scales in favor of the Puritans over the Quakers as he relates the progress (or lack of) print production in the Middle Colonies. Having a limited knowledge of the Quakers and their role in education and abolition movements later in the 19th century, I wonder how Starr can so easily say that they followed a "pattern in print communication that was surprisingly closer to the Chesapeake's regime than to New England's" (54). While I have no positive proof to refute his short example of Quaker intolerance toward publishing, I would like to see perhaps a more engaged look at what type of print culture and education Quakers did offer. Like the Puritans, or any religious group, there will most likely be forms of suppression of ideas for the sake of each religion's pursuit of truth and integrity. However, Starr only gives an example of how the Quakers prohibited Bradford from publishing certain material. He failed to give any other examples, though clearly there were materials being published to increase literacy and knowledge. I'd like to see more study done on Quaker education and publication at this time.
