THE MIDDLE EAST IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA: THE CASES OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, AND EDGAR ALLAN POE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ahmed Nidal Almansour ***** The Ohio State University 2005 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Steven S. Fink, Adviser Professor Jared Gardner _______________________ Professor Elizabeth Hewitt Adviser English Copyright by Ahmed Nidal Almansour 2005 ABSTRACT The presence of the Middle East in the works of American artists between the Revolution and the Civil War is pervasive and considerable. What makes this outlandish element of critical significance is that its proliferation coincided with the emerging American literary identity. The wide spectrum of meanings that was related to it adds even more significance to its critical value. In its theoretical approach, this work uses Raymond Schwab’s The Oriental Renaissance as a ground for all its arguments. It considers the rise of the Oriental movement in America to be a continuation of what had already started of Oriental researches in Europe. Like their counterparts in Europe, the American writers who are selected for this study were genuinely interested in identifying with the Oriental thought. The European mediation, however, should not be allowed to hold any significance other than pointing to the fact that French, German, and English Orientalist organizations were more technically equipped. The sentiment of identification with the East resonated equally on both sides of the Atlantic. This work investigates three cases from antebellum America: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe. It shows that each one of these writers found in the East the apt means to address a concern of a national nature. To Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sufism, through the Persian poets, spoke intimately to what ii the nation needed of reform on the individual level. He gravitated to their theory of man’s divinity and perfection. To Nathaniel Hawthorne, the history of the East provided events and characters that spoke allegorically to a need in American society to recognize more often the individualism of its citizens. To Edgar Allan Poe, the Arabesque multiplied the world of his fiction, and allowed him to critique the regional voices of the divided nation. iii To My Brothers, the Heroes of Freedom in and above the Syrian Desert: The Tyrant’s Whip Might Burn My Skin But It Will Never Touch My Soul iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My gratitude humbly goes to Emeritus Professor Thomas Cooley, who directed my work in the first two years of this research. I learned from him –in addition to our productive talks about the Hawthorne and his veiled ladies –that perseverance pays in the end. I wish to thank also my advisor, Professor Steven Fink for his constant support at every stage of my research. Without him, this work would not come out. My gratitude for his help will be incomplete if I don’t also thank him for his brotherly compassion at times of hardships. My thanks go also to Professor Jared Gardner and Elizabeth Hewitt who helped me put this work together. I am also grateful to my wife, Kafa Alazem, for her constant support and also for her help with all the Microsoft problems that puzzled my little expertise. Finally, I am indebted to the library of The Ohio State University and its helpful team. I want to thank them for their time and efforts. v VITA April 4, 1966…………………..Born-Homs, Syria. 1996…………………...............B.A. English Literature, Albaath University. 1999……………………………M.A. American Literature, The Arizona State University. 1999-2003……………………..Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University. 2003-2004……………………..Lecturer, King Saud University. June 29, 2004………………….Lead-speaker at King Abdulaziz Public Library Forum, presenting “The Influence of Islamic Culture on Antebellum America.” 2004-2005……………………..Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Area: American Studies vi Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………...……………………ii Dedication…………………………………………………………...………………...iv Acknowledgements…………………………………………………...……………......v Vita……………………………………………………………………...……………..vi Chapters 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………….….1 2. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Legacy of Sufism……...……………………..18 3. Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Oriental tale….………………………………...93 4. The Arabesque in Edgar Allan Poe’s fiction…………………………………177 5. Epilogue……………………………………………………………………...245 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..254 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The vast expanse of the sea was immense, and it usually took weeks and sometimes months for any piece of news to cross the Atlantic, yet the citizens of the newly born republic still eagerly waited to hear the latest of the Sublime Porte’s faraman, or edicts, and Sir William Jones’s discoveries in Persia and India. The news of Jean-Francois Champollion, “who has been living for these ten years on the Inscription of Rosetta, and who has lately been making some steps in Egyptian Literature, which really appear to be gigantic” (ABC, 367), soon enough was on the pages of Philadelphia’s The Museum of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art. America’s fascination with the Middle East would continue for more than half a century to occupy its citizens’ imagination. From the myriad pieces of evidence, I refer to the Massachusetts Historical Society’s selection in 1795 of Sir William Jones1, the world’s most prominent Orientalist then, as their honorary correspondent, not 1 Sir William Jones (1746-1794) was England’s most celebrated orientalist. He was a judge, a philologist, and a poet. At a young age he learnt Greek, Latin, Arabic and Persian, and later in life he would add Sanskrit. He studied law and become a circuit judge in Wales. At the end the American Revolution, he was appointed in 1783 to the supreme court of Bengal. He founded the Asiatick Society of Bengal, and institutionalized Oriental studies. 1 knowing that he had died few months earlier (Yhohannan, 107). Or the fact that the H. and P. Rice edition of The Arabian Nights (Philadelphia, 1794) was the best selling American book before the turn of the nineteenth century; Or the fact the Thomas Moore’s Oriental book, Lalla Rookh, was the best seller in 1817 in the United States (Schueller, US Orientalism 26). But America’s interest in the East did not originate at home; it was an extension of a movement that was forcefully changing the literary scene in Europe. In a retrospective evaluation of what writers in Europe wrote about the East from late 18th to mid 19th century, Edgar Quinet in his Genie des religions, published in 1841, devoted a whole chapter to the influence of the East in Europe, designating the chapter and the intellectual movement that it describes “The Oriental Renaissance” (Schwab, 11). Catching up with the fervor, America as well became involved in writing and talking about the East. The interest that American writers had in the East holds a unique significance for American scholarship because it coincided with the nation’s search for its cultural independence. The East became part and parcel of the emerging American identity. Emerson captures the spirit of this period in the following questions, taken from his “American Scholar”2: “If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?” (68). America was a perfect embodiment of this age 2 This was an oration that Emerson gave before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, on August 31, 1837. 2 of “becoming.” The study of the cultural traffic between America and the Islamic East in this agile age adds further significance to its re/formative spirit. American writers repeatedly transformed the East into a theater on which they paraded the drama of their domestic politics. Good examples of this would be Royall Tyler’s The Algerine Captive, William Ware’s Zenobia; or, The Fall of Palmyra, or Susan Haswell Rowson’s Slaves in Algeirs: or, A Struggle for Freedom. Or they transformed America into a stage and invited characters from the Islamic East to subtly examine the nation’s social and political apparatuses, as can be seen in Peter Markoe’s The Algerine Spy in Pennsylvania, or Mustapha’s letters in Washington Irving’s Salmagundi. But in most cases, the East would figure emblematically in the American text in the presence of a metaphor, a proverb, a name, or a racial characteristic that signifies the East. The character and thought of the East became a major subject of perusal for the American public. And the semantic spectrum of the East varied in its depth and meaning, as Malini Johar Schueller explains in her U.S. Orientalisms: Race, Nation, and Gender in Literature 1790-1890. The East was not homogeneously represented, argues Schueller, but was presented in variant meaning, according to its writers’ views on the nation’s politics, domestic and international. In many cases, however, writers in America (and Europe) expressed in their works a genuine interest in identifying with the character of the East. The East, to such writers, was not an expression of their fascination with the exotic other. Their works expressed, instead, their earnest search for their ‘self’ in the Oriental other. In this mood of Orientalism, there existed a room 3 in the American representation of the East that held and encouraged the Orient to appear with some of its native elements. In the pages of this study, I focus on the active role that the East played in the construct of the American letters, where the East had left lasting impressions.