Cartographers As Critics: Staking Claims in the Mapping of American Literature
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Cartographers as Critics: Staking Claims in the Mapping of American Literature by Kyle Carsten Wyatt A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Collaborative Program in Book History & Print Culture University of Toronto © Copyright by Kyle Carsten Wyatt 2011 Cartographers as Critics: Staking Claims in the Mapping of American Literature Kyle Carsten Wyatt Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Collaborative Program in Book History & Print Culture University of Toronto 2011 Abstract “Cartographers as Critics: Staking Claims in the Mapping of American Literature” recuperates the print culture phenomenon of literary map production, which became popular in North America around 1898. A literary map can be defined as any pictorial map that depicts imaginative worlds or authorial associations across geopolitical space. While notable examples have circulated for centuries in bound books, such as Thomas More’s Utopia and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, the majority of twentieth- century literary maps were ephemeral productions that have not survived in great numbers. These discursive documents functioned as compelling expressions of literary taste and cultural values; they circulated in magazines and newspapers, as gas station promotional giveaways and diner placemats, and as classroom “equipment.” Extant literary maps offer new perspectives on turn-of-the-twentieth century U.S. literary nationalism and the Public Library Movement, “fiction debates” and “Great Books” curriculums, the mid-century schism between anthropological folklorists and literary folklorists, and the role of popular cartography in U.S. print culture. Though today’s ii critics are generally unaware of the literary maps discussed here, these documents are consequential artifacts that have consistently equated canonized writers with pioneers and conquerors; in doing so, they have formulated literature as an extractable, finite, and controllable resource found on North America’s “literary frontiers.” Importantly, discursive literary maps make claims that are both critical assessments and assertions of territorial title. In doing so, they impose a cartographic framework on Native space that simultaneously evacuates and denies both the presence and possibility of Indigenous literatures. “Cartographers as Critics” seeks to problematize this ideological equation and to explore its critical implications for the recent “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, as well as the burgeoning revitalization of literary map production and circulation now present on the Internet. iii Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my committee members, Profs. Daniel Heath Justice, Jeannine DeLombard, and Heather Murray. In many ways, my time in graduate school involved two major journeys. Daniel, in particular, was a trusted and invaluable guide on both. I would like to thank Prof. Nick Mount for first showing me Paul Wilstach’s 1898 map shortly after I arrived in Toronto. I would also like to thank Prof. Matthew Farish for lending a geographer’s insight. Generously, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has funded my graduate education, and the University of Toronto’s Department of English and Massey College have supported research travel to the Library of Congress. Staff members at the Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress proved especially helpful, as did the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University. While I was still in the early stages of this project, Martha Hopkins of the Library of Congress kindly met with me and offered useful advice. I cannot thank Barbara Scheibel and her Local History and Genealogy Department colleagues at the Onondaga County Public Library enough for their support and assistance. Don Soltesz and Sarah Fenn Luth graciously talked to me about their fathers’ maps; Loretta Soltesz was wonderful enough to tell me more about her late husband’s career. Murray Hudson Antiquarian Books, Maps, Prints & Globes in Halls, Tennessee, The Old Map Gallery in Denver, Colorado, and Schein & Schein Antique Maps & Prints in San Francisco, California, were valuable resources as well. Thanks also to Bryan Dickie, who photographed my collection of literary maps in his Toronto studio. I owe a debt of gratitude to Profs. John Wunder, Joe Starita, and George Wolf of the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Thank you, George, for suggesting Canada. I also want to thank Jamison Wyatt for his research savvy, Catherine Schwartz for keeping me motivated and for correcting my makeshift French, and Ellen Kohtz for inspiring me and pointing out my misplaced commas since the sixth grade. Finally, there is Trevor, who made each page possible. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents .................................................................................................................v List of Figures .................................................................................................................... vi List of Appendices ........................................................................................................... viii Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Mapping a New Method of Conquest ..............................................................21 Chapter 2: Institutionalizing the Genre: Paul Mayo Paine’s Literary Map Project ...........59 Chapter 3: “Scholars might complain”: Fakelore Heroes on Maps of American Folklore .......................................................................................................................102 Chapter 4: Un(-)settling Claims: Toward a Process of Literary Un-Mapping ................136 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................171 Illustrations ......................................................................................................................183 Works Consulted ..............................................................................................................212 Appendices .......................................................................................................................227 Copyright Acknowledgements .........................................................................................230 v List of Figures 1. A Map Which Is a Literary Map of the United States (1898) 2. A Map of the United States Which Aims to Show Some Recently Staked Claims (1901) 3. Literary Map of the United States Showing Some Unclaimed Reservations (1902) 4. A Map Showing the Invasion of Europe by American Writers of Fiction (1908) 5. A Map Showing the Literary Invasion of Africa by Anglo-Saxon Authors (1911) 6. The Invasion of Asia by Anglo-Saxon Authors (1912) 7. A Map Showing the Invasion of North America by Foreign Authors (1912) 8. Map of Good Stories (1924) 9. Map of Good Stories (1925) 10. Map of Good Stories (1931) 11. Map of Adventures for Boys and Girls: Stories, Trails, Discoveries, Explorations & Places to Read About (1925) 12. The Northward Map of Truthful Tales (1926) 13. The Booklovers Map of America (1939) 14. The County Library Comes Home to the People (1927) 15. Chattanooga Public Library (Tennessee) Book Display (1926) 16. A Map of the Principal Local Color Regions of the United States (1921) 17. Literary Frontiers and Local-Color Regions (1934) 18. William Gropper’s America: Its Folklore (1946) 19. American Folklore & Legends (1951) 20. A Map of Full of Myths (1959) 21. Storyteller’s Map of American Myths (1960) 22. Detail, Storyteller’s Map of American Myths vi 23. Folklore and Legends of Our Country (1960) 24. Verso detail, Folklore and Legends of Our Country 25. Garden at the End of the World (Le Jardin au Bout du Monde) (1997) 26. Philological and Historical Chart (1878) 27. Details, Philological and Historical Chart 28. Nebraska Centennial Literary Map and Guide to Nebraska Authors (1967) vii List of Appendices 1. Working List of Literary Maps Designed by Paul Mayo Paine 2. Working List of Paul Mayo Paine’s Literary Maps Revised by Others viii 1 Introduction Maps are texts that tell us important stories. […] They are narratives with a purpose, stories with an agenda. –John Rennie Short, The World through Maps Well, then, that map’s a liar again. I never see such a liar as that map. –Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad In the fall of 1993, the Library of Congress launched “Language of the Land: Journeys into Literary America,” a traveling showcase of seventy-one literary maps and photographs. The Washington Post described the exhibition as “a literary road show” that “transformed” the Library’s Madison Building into “a reader’s road map of the Republic, celebrating our scribes from the Arctic to the Gulf Coast and from sea to shining sea.” Even as the Post questioned some of the curatorial selections as “parochial,” it concluded, “The exhibit is a triumph of magnificent material over pedestrian presentation.”1 “Language of the Land” left the Library of Congress in January 1994 and embarked on a 20-city tour across the United States. While newspapers and free weeklies printed notices and brief reviews of the traveling show, none expressed the Post’s tempered enthusiasm for literary maps. Occasionally, a newspaper would