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American Regionalism and He Problem of Minor Literature: a Study of Three Post-Civil War Novels

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American Regionalism and He Problem of Minor Literature: a Study of Three Post-Civil War Novels Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1989 American Regionalism and He Problem of Minor Literature: A Study of Three Post-Civil War Novels Christopher Lambert Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Lambert, Christopher, "American Regionalism and He Problem of Minor Literature: A Study of Three Post- Civil War Novels" (1989). Dissertations. 2704. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2704 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1989 Christopher Lambert AMERICAN REGIONALISM AND THE PROBLEM OF MINOR LITERATURE: A STUDY OF THREE POST-CIVIL WAR NOVELS by Christopher Lambert, O.F.M. A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 1989 (c) 1989, Christopher Lambert, O.F.M. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to extend special thanks Dr. James E. Rocks, the Director of this dissertation, whose invaluable research and proofreading assistance helped to shape this study and bring it to its conclusion. In addition, I am grateful to Dr. Paul Messbarger R. Messbarger. of Loyola and Dr. Da­ vid M. LaGuardia of John Carroll University, the other members of my committee, for their exhaustive critical suggestions for the revision of this manuscript at every stage. I likewise wish to acknowledge the contributions of Lorna Newman of Loyola's inter-library loan service for finding the numerous obscure research materials which I required; Dr. Micael Clarke of Loyola for her assistance in working out the discussion of realism; James Bratager for his help with the material on the background of American History; and Mike Ward for his unflagging patience and encouragement which enabled me to bring this dissertation to its conclusion. ii VITA The author, Brother Christopher (David) Lambert, O.F.M., is the son of George F. Lambert and Frances (Perko) Lambert. He was born on April 28, 1945, in Indianapolis, Indiana. His elementary education was obtained at Holy Trinity School, and his secondary education was completed at Cathedral High School, both in Indianapolis. Brother Christopher completed his undergraduate studies at Loyola University of Chicago in 1974. He served as chairperson of the English Department and Director of the Honors Program at Padua Fran­ ciscan High School in Cleveland, Ohio, while attending John Carroll Uni­ versity, where he completed his studies for the master's degree in 1984. In September, 1984, Brother Christopher was awarded an assistantship in English at Loyola University of Chicago, enabling him to pursue his doctoral studies. He also served as Coordinator of Outreach and Articulation during the 1986-87 academic year. He completed his doctoral program in 1989. Brother Christopher has been a member of the Sacred Heart Province of the Order of Friars Minor since 1970. ill TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ii VITA ............................................. iii Chapter I. ISSUES IN CANON FORMATION . 1 Introduction . 1 Framing the Argument . 5 The Many Faces of the Canon . 8 The Making of a Canon . 21 Opening Up the Canon: What is Literature? . 33 The Nature of Contemporary Revisionism . 40 The Challenge of Canon Theory . 43 Notes for Chapter I . 46 IL THE PROBLEM OF MINOR LITERATURE .............. 48 The Background of Minor Literary Theory . 51 Formalist Approaches to Minor Literature . 56 Reader-Oriented Perspectives . 63 The Role of Politics . 73 Other Considerations . 79 Toward a Definition of Minor Literature . 85 Notes for Chapter II . 89 III. AN AMERICAN FORM OF PASTORAL: THE RELATIONSHIP OF REGIONALISM TO REALISM ..... 92 The Rise of a New America . 93 The Shift from Romanticism to Realism . 96 Realism as a Literary Convention .................... 102 Regionalism and Local Color ....................... 123 Notes for Chapter III ............................ 137 IV IV. A GOOD STORY AND THEN SOME: BRET HARTE'S GABRIEL CONROY RECONSIDERED ...... 138 The Shaping of Bret Harte the Writer . 140 The Adventure of Composing Gabriel Conroy ............ 152 Early Twilight: The Decline of Bret Harte .............. 165 Gabriel Conroy Then and Now ...................... 167 Notes for Chapter IV . 172 V. "A PLEASING STORY OF THE HEROIC IN IMAGINED LIVES": GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE'S MADAME DELPHINE .... 174 The South of George Washington Cable . 177 The Evolution of Madame Delphine ................... 185 In Defense: "I shall always be glad I wrote it" ........... 194 Reconsidering Madame Delphine and George Washington Cable 198 Notes for Chapter V . 207 VI. "THE DRAUGHTY CORRIDORS LATELY ABANDONED BY PURITANISM": MARY WILKINS FREEMAN'S PEMBROKE ... 208 Freeman's New England .......................... 210 From Randolph to Pembroke ....................... 213 The Loneliness of Meaningless Idealism: Pembroke . 220 The Hawthorne Connection . 224 A Great Deal of Important Tradition . 234 Notes for Chapter VI . 242 CONCLUSION ...................................... 244 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 248 v CHAPTER I ISSUES IN CANON FORMATION "Creative literature exists, not for literary historians, but for readers." - Boris Tomashevskii 1. Introduction After nearly a score of years the issue of canon revision continues to insinuate itself upon the academy in a variety of guises, from the mili- tant demands for outright "canon busting" to the milder calls for "opening up the canon" in order to include groups, writers, and works which had previously been either omitted or undervalued for what have come to be seen as other than purely literary reasons. Remedying the situation seems at first almost too obvious and simple for it to ever have developed into a problem at all: simply compile an inclusive canon which will incor- porate all the known writers and all their known literary works. The first difficulty in doing this, however, is arriving at a definition of the term "literary": do only traditional genres such as novels, short stories, plays, and poems fall into this category, or is there a case to be made for diaries, letters, journals, and discursive essays? The second problem is that any catalogue of works can never be totally neutral; some works will 1 2 be identified as "major" (i.e., more important historically, more "literary," more artistic, etc.), while others will be regarded as "minor." The ques­ tion always arises as to the bases on which such judgments are made: how are the determining criteria formulated? are these criteria objective and external to the works they describe, or do factors such as "taste" play a role in arriving at these decisions? These problems in themselves are daunting enough, but there are also other difficulties of a less aesthetic or philosophical nature. Some au­ thors or certain of their works have been classed as minor for so long that they become gradually more "lost" with every reformulation of the canon. Furthermore, there are obscure works which have been out of print for so long that the physical absence (or scarcity) of a text, even when the author or work is known, renders them virtually non-existent. The hope of ever arriving at a totally comprehensive canon, then, is a dim one. Canons from before the middle of the twentieth century give the impression that the domain of "literature" has, for the most part, been in the hands of primarily white men, for little representation of either wom­ en or non-whites is to be found. Revisionists have long been convinced that numerous texts had been repressed on ethnic and gender grounds; further, they argued, the norms for defining what constituted "literary" were much too restrictive. And so began the movement to "open up the canon" and make it truly representative of the diversity of people and 3 · cultures which constitute the American heritage. In her recent observations as outgoing president of the MLA, Bar­ bara Herrnstein Smith rightly notes (285-86) that underlying the current controversies over the canon is the notion that the term "canon" is really more of a "vivid allegory and abbreviation" for other issues which are in themselves much more urgent than simply reinstating lost or undervalued authors and works into the canon; what is really at stake, she asserts, is "the location of intellectual and institutional authority in the literary acad­ emy and, thereby, of cultural and social authority more broadly," an issue which is not new, but· which highlights the cumul~tive force of other de­ mographic, political, and intellectual concerns. Such is a sampling of some of the major issues that current canon study is addressing. This dissertation does not presume to answer all the questions or solve all the problems arising from these issues, for no one perspective or approach could be so broad as to encompass the many fac­ ets of the overall situation. What this study does do is to frame the issue of canon study in its historical and theoretical frameworks, thereby identi­ fying the ways in which canon formation has functioned in the past. The findings herein demonstrate that the norms which underlie principles of selection throughout the ages have been as mutable as the resulting can­ ons. Growing out of this discussion is the question of how valorization and canonic rank have been determined over the years: how the catego­ ries of "major" and "minor" have been decided at various times, and how 4 · these decisions have affected the status of particular works. The subject of "minor literature" is considered here not as an inherently problematic designation in itself, but rather how particular works either "become minor" in the judgment of critics contemporary with the work or how works change between "major" and "minor" status over time.
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