This dissertation has been 62—2140 microfilmed exactly as received HIRSCH, David Harry, 1930— THE INTELLECTUAL IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL, 1792-1860: A STUDY IN THE SEARCH FOR REALITY AND FORM. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1961 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE INTELLECTUAL IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL, 1792-1860 A STUDY IN THE SEARCH FOR REALITY AND FORM DISSERTATION Presented In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy In the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By David Harry Hirsch, B. A., M. A The Ohio State University 1961 Approved by f a . ; / - Adviser Department of English CONTENTS Chapter Page I. THE CONCEPT OF THE INTELLECTUAL ............... 1 II. THE INTELLECTUAL A5 MAN OF R E A S O N ............. 45 III. THE INTELLECTUAL AS RE V O L U T I O N A R Y ............. 82 IV. THE INTELLECTUAL AS OUTSIDER .......................127 V. THE INTELLECTUAL AS DEMOCRAT .......................136 VI. CONCLUSION..........................................262 LIST OF BOOKS C I T E D ........................ 234 AUTOBIOGRAPHY ............................................ 289 ii CHAPTER I THE CONCEPT OP THE INTELLECTUAL In his essay, "Ttae Cult of Experience in American Writing," Philip Rahv flays "late" American authors for their Intoxication with "experience" and "classic" American writers for their Indifference to It. He then goes on to maintain that "the one character missing In the American novel is the intellectual," though he qualifies this by saying, "He [the intellectual] may appear in it [the Ameri­ can novel] in his professional capacity— as artist, teacher, or scientist— but very rarely as a person who thinks with his entire being, that is to say, as a person who transforms ideas into actual dramatic motives Instead of merely using them as ideological conventions or as theories so externally applied that they can be dispensed with at will." But the accusation, In spite of Rahv*s qualification, remains a damning one, for it leads him very logically to the conclu­ sion that "Everything i3 contained in the American novel but ideas," ideas being defined as "at best Judgments of reality, at worst substitutes for it."^ ^-Image and Idea (Norfolk, Connecticut, 1957), P* 11. 1 2 Crucial to Rahv*s argument, of course, is his defini­ tion of the word "intellectual." Certainly, the definition i3 an interesting one, but it is obviously too vague to cope adequately with a word that in the twentieth century has come in for so much abuse and has become so emotionally surcharged. Furthermore, this attempt to frame a definition that is static has resulted in a great deal of confusion in the criticism of the American novel, especially with respect to the novels relation to "ideas," "reality," and "experi­ ence." The American novel has been considered on the one hand too preoccupied with ideas, and on the other too indifferent to them; obsessed with experience, or oblivious to it; hostile to reality or infatuated with it. Some of this confusion can, I think, be dispelled by approaching the word "intellectual" as an open concept. For if we forget about finding an ironclad definition of the intellectual, and concentrate rather on providing a basis for identifying him, it becomes possible to discuss his appearance in the American novel meaningfully. The way in which this can be done is hinted at by Morris Weitz in his article "The Role of 'Hieory in aesthetics": If I may paraphrase Wittgenstein, we must not ask, What is the nature of any philosophical x?, or even, according to the semanticist, "What doe3 'x* mean?" a transformation that leads to the dis­ astrous interpretation of "art" as a name for some specifiable class of objects; but rather, what is 3 the use or employment of "x"? What does "x" do In the language?* In the same way, the question that concerns me pri­ marily Is not What Is the Intellectual? but What does the Intellectual do, what purpose does he serve In the American novel? When and why and how does he enter the novel as a character, and what is his function in it? How does his presence (whether he is portrayed successfully or not) modify the genre to make it one thing rather than another? At this Juncture it should be clear that this dissertation will endeavor not to elucidate the status and role of the intellectual as such, but, by considering the role given him in fiction, to illuminate the novels studied. In the first section of this chapter, then, I will limit the subject by tracing the development of the modern intellectual, thereby hoping to discover some of the quali­ ties which distinguish him. In the second section, I undertake to clarify the intellectual's position and impor­ tance in the American novel, considering the literary form in relation to some of the social and philosophical problems which refuse to detach themselves from any consideration of the novel. One's first impulse in trying to describe the intel­ lectual is to make some sort of class identification. p The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, XV (September, 19$ & )> 3 0 • 4 Raymond Aron, in The Opium of the Intellectuals, speaks of the intellectuals as "scribes, men of letters, and experts."^ Ttiis presumably includes more definable social classes such as artists, writers, teachers, scholars, lawyers, doctors, and clergymen. The problem that an attempted class distinc­ tion give rise to is discussed by Karl Mannheim in his Ideology and Utopia: One of the most impressive facts about modern life is that in it, unlike preceding cultures, intellectual activity is not carried on exclusively by a socially rigidly defined class, such as a priesthood, but rather by a social stratum which is recruited from an increasingly inclusive area of social life. This sociological fact determines essentially the uniqueness of the modern mind, which is characteristically not based upon the authority of a priesthood, which is not closed and finished, but which is rather dynamic, eleastic, in a constant state of flux, and perpetually con­ fronted by new problems. Even humanism was already largely the expression of such a more or less socially emancipated stratum, and where the nobil­ ity became the bearer of culture it broke through the fixedness of a class-bound mentality in man respects. But not until we come to the period of bourgeois ascendancy does the level of cultural life become Increasingly detached from a given class. What we seek, then, in looking for the modern (not necessarily contemporary) intellectual is more a particular type of man than a member of a sociologically well-defined class. But what is the nature of this type? I believe 3(New York, 1957), p. 203- ^Ed. Louis Wirth (New York, 19^9), p. 1 3 9 . that we may best approach a description of the intellectual by trying to trace his emergence in history. As the subsequent discussion will make clear, I sun not, at thi3 point, primarily concerned with the history of a word, but with the development of a concept. Etymolog- lcally, the Oxford English Dictionary dates the first English usage of "intellectual" as a noun in 1652: Benlowes Theoph. iiv, "First race of intellectuals." The next instance cited is 1813, when Byron comments in his Journal, "Canning is to be here, Frere & Sharpe,— perhaps Qifford. I wish I may be well enough to listen to these intel­ lectuals." Barzun claims that "As we use them today, the words intellectual* and *anti-intellectual * are scarcely more than sixty years old. Their continual use in praise and blame goes back to the Dreyfus Affair."5 However, in Culture and Society 1780-1950> Raymond Williams finds in Adam Smith "a significant . description of that special class of persons who from the 1820s were to be called •intellectuals.*" And he then goes on to cite a passage written by Sir Egerton Brydges in the 1820s: "it is a vile evil that literature is become so much a trade all over Europe. Nothing has gone so far to nurture a corrupt taste, and to give the unintellectual power over the intellectual. 5fHie House of Intellect (New York, 1959), p. 1. 6 (Garden City, New York, 1959)> P* 38* 6 In any case, the actuality considerably antedates the word, for historically, the type of the modern intellec­ tual seems to have led its origin In the second half of the eighteenth century. Mannheim, as we have already seen, locates the distinction between the modem and pre-modem Intellectual in the former*s having grown out of the his­ torical phenomenon of "bourgeois ascendancy." The focal point of this ascendancy (which was ideological as well as sociological, and political) was the French Revolution. Bronowski and Mazlish, in The Western Intellectual Tradition, describe the third "swath" (1790-1830) of their history as follows: We have given the title The Great Revolutions to the period which we are now to discuss, because it Includes three revolutions: the Industrial Revolu­ tion, the American Revolution, and the French Revolu­ tion. To use the word "revolution" to describe all three of these events is not wholly an artifice of language, because these revolutions form an histor­ ical unity. About 1760 there occurred the explosive moment in European and world history in which the central features of contemporary life were created in a remarkably short time. One essential feature of contemporary life Is large-scale, mechanized Industry: this was created in the Industrial Revo­ lution In England. A second feature of contemporary life Is that the center of gravity of the Western World today lies somewhere between Europe and North America; and the shift westward to this imaginary point in the Atlantic begins with the American Revolution.