Epic in American Culture Phillips, Christopher N. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press Phillips, Christopher N. Epic in American Culture: Settlement to Reconstruction. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Project MUSE. doi:10.1353/book.13693. https://muse.jhu.edu/. For additional information about this book https://muse.jhu.edu/book/13693 [ Access provided at 24 Sep 2021 18:40 GMT with no institutional affiliation ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Epic in American Culture This page intentionally left blank Epic in American Culture Settlement to Reconstruction Christopher N. Phillips The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore © 2012 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2012 Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Mary land 21218- 4363 w w w . p r e s s . j h u . e d u Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Phillips, Christopher N. Epic in American culture : settlement to reconstruction / Christopher N. Phillips. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-0489-9 (hdbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4214-0527-8 (electronic) ISBN-10: 1-4214-0489-3 (hdbk.: alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4214-0527-X (electronic) 1. Epic literature, American—History and criticism. 2. Literature and history—United States—History—18th century. 3. Literature and history—United States—History—19th century. 4. National characteristics, American, in literature. I. Title. PS169.E63P47 2011 811'.03209—dc23 2011029762 A cata log record for this book is available from the British Library. 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In memoriam Jay Fliegelman (1949–2007) ex uno, plures This page intentionally left blank Contents A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s ix Introduction: Epic Travels 1 Prologue: Reading Epic 20 1 Diff usions of Epic Form in Early America 37 2 Constitutional Epic 72 3 Epic on Canvas 97 4 Transcendentalism and the “New” Epic Traditions 136 5 Tracking Epic through The Leatherstocking Tales 160 6 Lydia Sigourney and the Indian Epic’s Work of Mourning 187 7 Longfellow’s Pantheon 220 8 Melville’s Epic Career 253 Epilogue: Invisible Epic 285 Notes 305 Bibliography 327 Index 349 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments The fi rst thanks go, of course, to my wife, Emily. She has not yet read this book. This is because she has not needed to. She has heard and discussed every idea of every page, including the ones that didn’t make it into the fi nal version. She has mourned the deletions, nodded politely at the digressions, and taught me when enough was really enough. In addition to her patient listening, she has loved, encouraged, cooked, played, and done more than I can say to make this book a part of our lives and not the only (or most important) part of our lives. Together, we have welcomed two boys into the world since this project began, which means that for two people in our house, their father has always been at work on this book. I hope we all have a swift , smooth transition to the next stage of life— before we have Aliki’s How a Book Is Made memorized. My family has continually shown their support throughout this project. My father, Richard, is my most important imagined reader, and what ever is clear about this book is through the eff ort to do what he has taught me about writing over what is now de cades. My sister, Britta, helped me see the importance of Mil- ton to poetry many years ago and has kept asking brilliant questions about this work that helped me say what I needed to say. My mother, Elizabeth, may be the x Acknowledgments most basic infl uence on my path as a scholar of literature, and her love of the word and of people has left its mark on this book. Many friends and colleagues have helped to hone, elevate, and articulate this project. Luke Bullock has always asked the needed questions, leaving the easy skepticism of “What is an epic?” aside for more important matters, such as this scholar’s duty to the texts he studies. He has nurtured this study’s human charac- ter. Matt Garrett, Jolene Hubbs, Steffi Dippold, Patty Roylance, and Joe Shapiro gave invaluable criticism and encouragement in this study’s early stages. Conver- sations with many colleagues have shaped the development of this work, too many to thank in this space; especially important have been those with Shelley Fishkin, Sam Otter, Max Cavitch, Ed Larkin, Marcy Dinius, Jason Shaff er, Paula Bennett, Lawrence Buell, and David Shields. Mark Thistlethwaite gave generously of his prodigious knowledge of American art criticism and helped energize my study of history painting. Libraries and librarians have been central to this work, which has been sup- ported by the generous funding of a Mellon Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia and a Diana Korzenik Fellowship from the Friends of the Long- fellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My time at the Library Company was full of discovery and scholarly engagement, thanks in large part to their re- markable staff , particularly Connie King, who tirelessly helped me search out ma- terials and connected me to scholars who helped me situate the epic more richly into American and other cultures. Anita Israel and the staff at the Longfellow National Historic Site were a delight to work with, and their making Longfellow’s library available to me gave rare insight into the poet’s prodigious reading (and furnishing) in the epic tradition. John Mustain, Polly Armstrong, Peter Whid- den, and the rest of the staff at Stanford University’s Special Collections Library have helped, cheered, and fed this project from its fi rst stages to completion. The library staff at Lafayette College, especially college archivist Diane Shaw, fre- quently went beyond the call of duty, in par tic u lar in securing a crucial acquisi- tion that I am honored to introduce to scholarship in this work (see chap. 2). The Academic Research Committee at Lafayette provided timely funds to support the later research and other expenses of this book, in par tic u lar allowing for Ka- tie Thompson and Nicole Ceil to spend a summer poring through curatorial rec- ords and manuscript collections with me in New York and Philadelphia institu- tions; Katie and Nicole’s work was invaluable in bringing together a wide range of materials on art, law, and poetry. Thanks to the staff at the National Academy in New York, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum Acknowledgments xi of Art, the New- York Historical Society, and the New York Public Library for their accommodation and help during that summer. Working with Matt McAdam and the rest of the staff at the Johns Hopkins University Press has been a joy and a privilege; everyone has demonstrated a level of enthusiasm and professionalism in producing this book that has continu- ally impressed me and sustained my own eff orts in seeing this project through to completion. An earlier version of the introduction has been previously published as “Light- ing Out for the Rough Ground: America’s Epic Origins and the Richness of World Literature,” PMLA 122.5 (2007), and is used with the permission of the Modern Language Association of America. Parts of chapter 1 have appeared in altered form as “Epic, Anti- Eloquence, and Abolitionism: Thomas Branagan’s Avenia and The Penitential Tyrant,” Early American Literature 44.3 (2009) and “Fragmenting the Bard: Sarah Wentworth Morton’s Intertextual Epic,” Litera- ture in the Early American Republic 4 (2012); these are used with permission from the University of North Carolina Press and AMS Press, respectively. My thanks to the editors and readers of these journals for their insight and guidance. Finally, two people stand apart as special guides to this project. Gavin Jones has been a trea sured teacher, supporter, and critic in my life for over a de cade, and his ability to be detailed and succinct in his praise, his critiques, and his ad- vice continues to amaze me. I have learned much from Gavin about being a pro- fessor, a professional, and a lover of texts. And Jay Fliegelman, to whom this book is dedicated, poured himself into supporting and improving this study just as he has so many other works of American literary and historical scholarship, some of which appear in the bibliography of this book. Working with Jay made one quickly aware that strong scholarship must operate in a tradition, formed oft en from chosen relations, and the company I have enjoyed in my chosen tradition has been good indeed. An earlier version of this study was the last dissertation Jay signed, and though he did not live to see the volume you (dear reader) now hold, his faith that my story of the epic in America was a story worth telling has sus- tained the research and revision that became this book. Another career is launched, thanks to a man unreservedly committed to nurturing new professors. This page intentionally left blank Epic in American Culture This page intentionally left blank introduction Epic Travels The wisest defi nition of poetry the poet will instantly prove false by setting aside its requisitions.