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Reinscribing the Revolution: Genre and the Problem of National History

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Reinscribing the Revolution: Genre and the Problem of National History Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2006 Reinscribing the Revolution: Genre and the Problem of National History in Early American Historical Novels Joseph John Letter Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Letter, Joseph John, "Reinscribing the Revolution: Genre and the Problem of National History in Early American Historical Novels" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1962. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1962 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. REINSCRIBING THE REVOLUTION: GENRE AND THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL HISTORY IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORICAL NOVELS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Joseph John Letter B.A. University of New Orleans, 1990 M.A., University of New Orleans, 1995 August 2006 Dedication To Michelle, Ian, Maddie, and Tim, all for you—always. ii Acknowledgments Undoubtedly, dissertation writing is a lonely process, but such feelings should never be confused with the reality that one simply cannot complete so complex and arduous a project without the support of many people. I believe that my work is the direct result of the great fortune of having such patient and generous people in my life. If this dissertation has any merit, it is due primarily to them. Deepest thanks go to my director, Jerry Kennedy, for steadily encouraging me to work harder and making me better every day for it. I am only now beginning to fully recognize how wise your guidance has been. I also especially want to thank Ed White, whose enthusiastic support helped me to believe in the value of this project and whose vision made such a difference in my intellectual growth. In addition, I wish to thank Bainard Cowan, Bill Boelhower, and Sue Marchand, who all granted their generous support to this research and offered insightful comments that made the dissertation better. Thanks also to Rick Moreland who as my faculty mentor introduced me to both Jerry and Ed and guided me towards this project from the beginning. Finally, I want to formally recognize and express my sincerest gratitude to my wife, Michelle, my parents, Tim and Mary Ann, and my family, Ian, Maddie, and Tim. Your daily sacrifices enabled me to pursue this dream, and I will never forget that. iii Table of Contents Dedication…………………...………………………………………………………...…. ii Acknowledgments……………………………...........................…………………..…… iii Abstract……………………………………………………………..…………………… .v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1. The Champions of Freedom: “The greatest monster of all”……………….… 7 Chapter 2. “What is to become of our past revolutionary history?”: Negotiating Memory and History in Cooper’s The Spy and John Neal’s Seventy-Six………. 49 Chapter 3. The Pilot and Saratoga: Discursive and Geographic Space in American Historical Representations…………………...........................…..….. 94 Chapter 4. Situating the Nation: Local History and Transnational Identity in Cooper’s Lionel Lincoln and Child’s The Rebels.......................................… 144 Chapter 5. Lafayette and the Romance of History: Negating the Revolution in Frederic de Algeroy and Yorktown………………………………………….… 186 Works Cited….……………………………………………………………….……….. 213 Vita………...…………………………………………………………..………………. 221 iv Abstract This dissertation examines nine early historical novels of the Revolution that recover an important yet largely forgotten archive of American cultural history. In the years following the War of 1812 writers from the Revolution’s successor generation reinscribed the history of national origins through narratives of the Revolution that address issues left unresolved by the Revolutionary War and subsequent Constitutional debates; thus, the Revolution itself becomes an important and ubiquitous subject area for writers attempting to situate narratives of national history. These national allegories, consciously constructed as patriotic narratives, unconsciously “bring forth” figurations that represent the official nation’s Others, people excluded by race, class, and gender. Thus, the dissertation addresses these novels both in their dimension as official patriotic narratives of national history and also as narratives that introduce liminal figures that undermine naïve versions of a unified nation. Ultimately, early Revolutionary historical novels express complex and conflicted versions of an American nation as it was constructed in the years leading up to the jubilee celebrations of 1825-26. Among the texts explored here are Samuel Woodworth’s The Champions of Freedom (1816); James Fenimore Cooper’s The Spy (1821), The Pilot (1824), and Lionel Lincoln (1825); John Neal’s Seventy-Six (1823), Lydia Maria Child’s The Rebels (1825); Eliza Cushing’s Saratoga (1824) and Yorktown (1826); and Giles Gazer’s (pseud.) Frederic de Algeroy (1825). v Introduction This project began with some rather simplistic questions about genre and resistance in early American historical novels. Almost from the first moment American historical novels were published, critics assumed that these works were crudely imitative of the form that Sir Walter Scott established (Waverley, 1814), and that the most famous American writer of historical novels, James Fenimore Cooper, was “the American Scott.”1 Cooper disagreed, and the earliest expressions of the form, from Cooper and others, suggested a much more complicated generic inheritance. The familiar colonial logic that Americans lacked original artistic genius, that their literary productions were derivative and provincial, reinforced what I see as misreadings of some of the first expressions of an American national identity. But what I did not see was just how complex and unstable the process of negotiating an American identity was for these writers. Furthermore, the notion of process demands that assumptions about historical periodization be re-thought. How do historical novels that hearken back to the Revolutionary break with the colonial past figure as part of the Early National period? When exactly does the early republic become the early nation, and how does a literary form, the historical novel, that specifically considers the relation between present and past, respond to the problem of an unresolved colonial heritage in America? These questions force us to reconsider assumptions about historical progress and literary histories that support it. In this sense my project follows some of the questions that William Spengemann asks in A Mirror for Americanists. Spengemann primarily argues for a much broader interpretation of colonial “American literature,” one that includes all of the New World, rather than just the original thirteen 1 See George Dekker, The American Historical Romance and James Fenimore Cooper: the American Scott. 1 colonies. Such a broadened perspective provides “several literary genealogies to set against the [New England Puritan] one that now occupies our exclusive attention” (22). This dissertation follows the logical consequences of such an expanded definition of American colonialism by suggesting that a broadened perspective on the colonial identity produces a more complicated understanding of how an American nation was constructed. Early historical novels, especially ones that deal with the American Revolution, explore the very “literary genealogies” that Spengemann addresses. These early novels show that the historical boundary between colonies and nation was never clear, despite the events of the Revolution. As Michael Warner notes, “the Revolution is a poor period marker of decolonization” (62), and thus, novels that look back upon that “period marker” and attempt to re-present an event that symbolized a colonial break inevitably struggle with issues that remained unresolved in the present. I will argue that historical novels, as a form of historiography, respond to the problems of national history by offering discursive alternatives to dominant, monologic versions of American history. In this respect, early American historical novels participate in a process of decolonization that postcolonial theorists address.2 Like American identity itself, these works neither directly descend from Old World imperialistic historical models built upon a dialectic of metropolitan center and colonial margins, nor do they leap, fully formed, out of a literary wilderness that descends from a Puritan myth of American essentialism and exclusion of the “other.” Rather, early historical novels, most especially ones that focus on the Revolution, negotiate the space of a third term through which American identity can emerge. The “third term,” for lack of a better 2 See Lawrence Buell, “American Literary Emergence as a Postcolonial Phenomenon” for one of the earliest examples of this connection. See also Michael Warner, Edward Watts, Malini Johar Schueller, Robert Blair St. George. 2 phrase, signifies what Marjorie Garber refers to as a “crisis category.”
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