He Re-Enchanted Landscape: Bret Harte's
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HE RE-ENCHANTED LANDSCAPE: BRET HARTE’S AND JOHN MUIR’S SPATIAL PRODUCTIONS ____________ A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Chico ____________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in English ____________ by William V. Lombardi Spring 2010 DEDICATION To my partner Jenny and our son Hawk, for their love, patience, and support: I dedicate this project to them. And in memory of my mother, Marge Lombardi, in whose library I found Coleridge Walks the Fells and A Walking Tour in Southern France many years ago. She loved literature, history, and nature, and was herself a prodigious walker. Her spirit permeates my approach to this endeavor. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In Fall of 2007 I came to Dr. Geoff Baker with a request: direct me to sources that will provide me with the language to talk about space, particularly the language of fictional spaces. He introduced me to the work of Bachelard, Anderson, Moretti, McClure, and Lefebvre. Many others remain names on a long reading list that I am certain will enrich my literary studies for years to come. I owe Dr. Baker a debt of gratitude for his interest in my pursuits, his support of my scholarship, and for acting as my advisor to the Graduate Equity Fellowship I received that eventually made much of the present work possible. I would also like to acknowledge the guidance and support of Dr. Andrea Lerner, who introduced me to the work of Annette Kolodny, Roderick Nash, Frederick Turner, and Henry Nash Smith. I am indebted to Dr. Lerner for the conversations stemming from our independent study in Native American and Hispanic literature of the American West; these, and other conversations growing out of our work together as her Teaching Assistant, gave me my first opportunities to fashion my arguments about place-based literature and literary studies. Her perspective has proven vital to my thesis. And lastly, but absolutely not least, I would like to acknowledge the supreme guidance of Dr. Lynn Houston. Throughout my career as an undergraduate and graduate student, she has presented me with opportunities that forced me to develop as a scholar. I feel, because of her generous efforts and kind support, my writing and my ideas have reached a level of complexity of which I had not suspected myself capable. The iv roots of this thesis date from Spring 2007 and the first work I did on the literature of California with Dr. Houston. By her guidance I received two grants that enabled me to visit research libraries containing primary materials which weigh heavily in my research. I cannot express my gratitude for all her insights. I truly appreciate the guidance of my thesis committee. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Dedication.................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements.................................................................................................... iv Abstract...................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I. General Introduction................................................................................... 1 Overview............................................................................................ 1 II. Replacing Bret Harte; Bret Harte Re-Placed .............................................. 31 Introduction........................................................................................ 31 Out of Place........................................................................................ 32 Literary Footnote: Amendments to the Myth .................................... 44 III. “Poker Flat” is Poker Flat: Re-Placing Bret Harte’s “Dream World of Sierra”............................................................................ 49 Introduction........................................................................................ 49 Harte’s Onomastics: “However Artificial, Indelible”........................ 51 Re-Placing Bret Harte’s “Dream World:” Mapping “Roaring,” “Outcasts,” and “Tennessee”....................................... 56 Enchantment and Re-Enchantment.................................................... 73 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 80 IV. Reconstructing Muir’s Yuba and Feather River Excursion........................ 83 Introduction: “Muir Eyes” and the Role of Fieldwork ...................... 83 Project Description: The Vicissitudes of Approximate Accuracy ........................................................................................ 89 The Prelude: “John’s Girl”................................................................. 95 The Excursion .................................................................................... 100 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 131 vi CHAPTER PAGE V. Landscape of Desire: “Knoxville” and Muir’s “Ecoaesthetic”................... 134 Introduction........................................................................................ 134 Mapping, Unmappable, Unmapping.................................................. 140 “Knoxville” and “Baker Farm”.......................................................... 148 Brownsville........................................................................................ 158 The Upshot......................................................................................... 171 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 173 Endnotes ................................................................................................................... 177 Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 185 Appendix A. Abbreviations Used in In-Text Citations .................................................... 198 vii ABSTRACT THE RE-ENCHANTED LANDSCAPE: BRET HARTE’S AND JOHN MUIR’S SPATIAL PRODUCTIONS by William V. Lombardi Master of Arts in English California State University, Chico Spring 2010 How do we discuss the role of place in literature? This thesis considers the influence of what is commonly thought of as setting in a text and offers new approaches to the field of place studies by examining the fictional productions of Bret Harte and the non-fiction essays of John Muir. Through the act of “re-placing” their work, examining their imaginary landscapes in the context of the landscapes that inspired them, I employ fieldwork, historiography, and biography to reconnect what I call the fictional space with the historical space. I also propose that the literatures of the American West can be classified into enchanted, disenchanted, and re-enchanted periods, which re- contextualizes present discussions of both these authors. The end result is a more clearly denoted conception of the relationship between site and text. viii CHAPTER I GENERAL INTRODUCTION Overview In the Atlas of the European Novel, Franco Moretti differentiates between historical space and fictional space. Historical space is what we think of as the “real” or the actual space; fictional space is the result of an author’s spatial production, what we commonly would call the setting of the narrative. Additionally, Moretti distinguishes between the study of literature in space, and the study of space in literature. The study of literature in space evaluates the author’s rendering of a location in comparison with the historical space. The study of space in literature examines the production of the author’s fictional spaces (3). Moretti uses maps as analytical tools to arbitrate between these two. The present undertaking is both a study of literature in space and a study of space in literature; as such, I alternate chapters dedicated to both areas of inquiry as they relate to the work of Bret Harte and John Muir. In this sense, while Harte and Muir will be my focus, the goal of this project is more broadly intended to establish the principal importance of place in fiction. Harte and Muir, then, are my case studies, acting as the subjects of my theoretical approach: I contend that both authors’ landscapes should be read within the critical framework of the enchantment, disenchantment, and subsequent re-enchantment of the American West. Reading Western landscapes through this lens changes the way its literature is currently appraised. 1 2 Because of this assertion, I have extended Moretti’s practice of mapping to include a component of fieldwork to put myself in direct contact with the landscapes that inspired their writings, in order to better evaluate their productions. I have spent a substantial amount of time researching and visiting the sites found in Harte’s and Muir’s work because it is my belief that the literary scholar exploring both the historical and the fictional space brings the roles of place, text, and author more comprehensively into focus. The combination of site-specific and textual study, within the format of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment, which I will later discuss in some detail, not only situates these authors’ work in specific environments, it establishes a new and important protocol by which to judge their productions. I identify this active, interdisciplinary scholarship, and what it attempts to achieve, as “re-placing” a text. The theme of the current project, spatial