Local Color Louisiana and the Limits of Literary Interpretation, 1865-1914
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2017 Translating Chopin's Parrot: Local Color Louisiana and the Limits of Literary Interpretation, 1865-1914 Matthew Paul Smith University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons, and the Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons Recommended Citation Smith, Matthew Paul, "Translating Chopin's Parrot: Local Color Louisiana and the Limits of Literary Interpretation, 1865-1914. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2017. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4425 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Matthew Paul Smith entitled "Translating Chopin's Parrot: Local Color Louisiana and the Limits of Literary Interpretation, 1865-1914." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Bill Hardwig, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Mary Papke, Martin Griffin, Thomas Haddox, Derek Alderman Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Translating Chopin's Parrot: Local Color Louisiana and the Limits of Literary Interpretation, 1865-1914 A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Matthew Paul Smith May 2017 ii Copyright © Matthew Paul Smith, 2017. All rights reserved. iii . werden alle Bücher der Menschen, und ihre Reden, etwas unverständliches an sich haben. ( Chladenius, Einleitung Zur Richtigen Auslegung Vernünftiger Reden und Schriften; § 157 ) iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to begin by expressing my deep appreciation for Bill Hardwig, who directed this dissertation. He waded patiently through crude argumentation and innumerable typos in those roughest of rough drafts. He returned commentary on these chapters with rapidfire speed, which in turn sped the progress of my own writing. His guidance balanced a respect for my own argumentative idiosyncrasies with a keen ability to pinpoint which critical moves of mine constituted fundamental missteps. His faith in and support for this oddball project from the prospectus stage have been unflagging. I could not have asked for a better editorial eye or for a better professional mentor. To Bill, with gratitude. Mary Papke's support for my work stretches back to time spent in her seminar classes on nineteenth-century American literature and literary naturalism. Her precision of thought and breadth of reading knowledge continue to impress and inspire me. Her incisive line-edits polished the edges off clunky sentences and made the prose of this project far clearer and more readable than it would have been without her revisions. I'm thankful as well for the assistance of Martin Griffin, whose enthusiasm for the material dates back to his seminar class on literature and memory where the earliest version of Chapter Four made its debut under the title "Evangeline's Empty Tomb: A Reflection on the Problems of Cajun Cultural Memory." Tom Haddox's insistence on clearly stating one's scholarly commitments continues to challenge and embolden my work, and I remain thankful for his example as an educator and a researcher. When I submitted my response to his (in)famous credo assignment as a rather quiet and uncertain first- year PhD student, he suggested that my "truest subject" was the intersection between the historical and the ineffable. This is that project, Tom. Thanks are due as well to Derek Alderman of the UT Geography Department, who agreed to come on board with this project despite having numerous professional commitments and an impressive array of scholarly projects underway. The faculty and staff of the University of Tennessee's English Department have provided me with a wonderfully supportive and collegial community in which to come of age as a scholar and a young man. I'd like to single out for special mention Dawn Coleman, Katy Chiles, Mike Lofaro, and our department's administrative assistant Leanne Hinkle for their cheerful assistance at various stages of my scholarly career. This endeavor also owes much to my undergraduate professors at LSU and the individualized attention they dedicated to grooming me for graduate study during my years in Baton Rouge. Especially helpful were Joseph Kronick, Elsie Michie, v Bill Demastes (who advised me that I needed to grow an intellectual backbone and "be an asshole sometimes" to succeed in academia), as well as the late Jack May, the first scholar whose work I cite in this project. Bill Boelhower remains the most influential professor I have known and has given me much to aspire to in terms of his humanism, his dazzling intellect, his almost mystical receptivity to the created world and to art, and his capacity for living in constant, innocent surprise at the graces of the everyday. Going back on the educational timeline even further, I would like to thank my junior high and high school English teacher Stephanie Judice for serving as a model educator and for encouraging me to pursue a career in academia. To round off my gratitude to my teachers by remembering the earliest ones, I would also like to thank the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, the teaching order of nuns who staffed my elementary school in New Iberia, Louisiana, for the educational foundation they laid for this entire enterprise. I take it as some small providence that I find myself composing this acknowledgments section on the feast day of their order's founder, St. Katharine Drexel. The Historic New Orleans Collection (a true aesthetic pleasure as a research site) deserves thanks for allowing me access to their collections, including rare tourism ephemera from New Orleans that proved crucial in the conclusion of Chapter Two. Thanks as well to UT subject librarian Chris Caldwell who assiduously assisted me in my attempt to reconstruct the nineteenth-century racial geography of New Orleans. I am grateful to the Hodges Library Special Collections, where I read Charles Gayarré's difficult-to-find Fernando de Lemos in bits and pieces over the course of a week. Thanks as well to my childhood library, the Iberia Parish Library's Main Street branch in New Iberia, Louisiana. There, during visits back to my hometown, I had access to a surprising number of nineteenth-century local color texts as well as scholarly books on Louisiana's Creole and Cajun cultures. The UT Humanities Center deserves special recognition for offering me the fellowship that gave me that most precious resource – time – to complete this project. Such a retreat into the vita contemplativa is a scholar's greatest luxury, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have been in residence there for my final year of graduate study. I would like to thank colleagues old and new for their contributions to my career either in the form of intellectual or social support. To Jessica Hoover for always being game for travel and adventure, including joining a road-trip pilgrimage up the Eastern seaboard into Canada to visit the site of the Acadian deportation at Grand Pré. To Abigail Griffith for rich conversations, vi though we might omit our sparring the first night we met over the comparative multicultural merits of New York City versus New Orleans. To Laura Hicks for introducing me to the cultural patterns of another locus that I have come to love, East Tennessee. To Mary Rump, who adds color to whatever local space she finds herself in: Knoxville, Las Vegas, Anchorage. To my other fellow graduate students, but in particular Katherine Ann Davis, Paige Lockhart, Staci Conner, Alli Clymer, Ben Kilgore, Matt Brock, Kimberly Turner, Kali Mobley Finn, Mike Finn, and Andrew Todd. Special recognition goes to Katie Burnett and John Stromski, who served as my departmental older sister and older brother. Their willingness to share their work and to show me "how to do the next trick" staved off a great deal of stress and confusion. I'd like to thank the Paulist Fathers who served Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and the UT campus parish of St. John XXIII over the past seven years, some of whom have moved on to other pastoral assignments – Fr. Rich Andre, Fr. Charlie Donahue, Fr. Don Andrie, Fr. Bob O'Donnell, Fr. Ron Franco, and Fr. Jerry Tully. For their spiritual direction as well as the graces (gratia actualis et gratia sacramentalis) they've provided during my time in Knoxville, I am sincerely grateful. To my students at the University of Tennessee, founts of intellectual energy, curiosity, and excitement. The students from my Caribbean literature class deserve particular thanks for their contributions to our discussions of Lafcadio Hearn's Chita. Because of their questions about and insights into Hearn's novella, the composition of Chapter Two moved far more quickly than it would have without them. Gratitude is due to my friends, members of communities infused with down-to-earth bonhomie, who have kept me steady through the years. To the old New Iberia crew, many of them friends since childhood – Spencer Robichaux, Tuoi Nguyen Robichaux, Jordan Viator, Elizabeth Voorhies Viator, Luke Verret, Erin Borel Verret, Allison Scurria, Sarah Lawson, Jake Lissard, and Rhett Bonvillain.