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The Language of Inversion in Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne

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The Language of Inversion in Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-23-2013 12:00 AM Preposterous America: The Language of Inversion in Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne Rasmus R. Simonsen The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Bryce Traister The University of Western Ontario Joint Supervisor Steven Bruhm The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Rasmus R. Simonsen 2013 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the American Literature Commons Recommended Citation Simonsen, Rasmus R., "Preposterous America: The Language of Inversion in Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne" (2013). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1523. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1523 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PREPOSTEROUS AMERICA: THE LANGAUGE OF INVERSION IN THOREAU, MELVILLE, AND HAWTHORNE (Monograph) by Rasmus R. Simonsen Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Rasmus R. Simonsen 2013 i Abstract This dissertation stages a series of readings that activate the inherent pull towards a queer aesthetic of “preposterousness” in the American Renaissance. In the introduction, I claim that American Studies and Queer Studies have been mutually implicated ever since F.O. Matthiessen’s seminal work American Renaissance . In this way, I bring to light the nascent strands of homoeroticsm and “deviant” practices that disrupt the teleology of normative masculinity in the nineteenth century. My intervention develops a queer heuristic through an exploration of the classical figure of hysteron proteron—the rhetorical inversion of the order of things. As a master-trope for my investigation, hysteron proteron allows for a closer investigation of texts on the syntactical level of discourse. Hence, through my textual methodology, I expose a backward-oriented aesthetic that confuses the norm of American progress, in order to build towards potential, or “eventual,” queer spaces. My authors employ hysteron proteron, or the preposterous, in order to champion a different vision of American masculinity. The texts of Thoreau, Melville, and Hawthorne overlap figurally in ways that allow me to establish a sense of contiguity between them. Thoreau employs hysteron proteron in order to condemn the increasing materiality of nineteenth-century American progress. Thoreau’s turn away from modernity—which is a return to the wilderness— engenders the potential for a sexual mobility that travels along paths that the normative trajectory of nineteenth-century masculinity could not glimpse. Reading Melville through the lens of architectural theory, I am here interested in tracing keywords related to masculine and feminine versions of domesticity as they appear in the short story, “I and ii My Chimney.” The aim is to show how the confusion of different spaces and directions works to enhance the profusion of ironic clusters in the narrative. In my final chapter, I show how questions of time, space, gender, and the nonhuman are filtered through a number of “childish confusions” in Hawthorne’s literature. I read the preposterous in Hawthorne as being undercut by a network of surprising connections between orifices and parts, natural and artificial, which recall the figural compounds that informed Thoreau’s nature and Melville’s architecture. Keywords American Literature, Nineteenth Century, Thoreau, Melville, Hawthorne, Queer Theory, Gender and Sexuality, Rhetoric, Psychoanalysis. iii Acknowledgments No text comes into existence ex nihilo . I am hugely indebted to an array of people for inspiring and nurturing the work that has gone into writing this dissertation. First of all, I want to thank my parents for their enduring love and support. I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to my partner, Stephanie Rade, who has been unwavering in her devoted and loving resolve to see me through this process. Furthermore, she is an astute close reader, and without her diligent editing skills this dissertation would be quite a bit shabbier. With love, I dedicate my dissertation to her. I want to acknowledge the committed effort and encouragement of my two doctoral advisors, Bryce Traister and Steven Bruhm, who have had the wisdom to know when to step in and when to leave me to my own devices; their combined intellectual output and capabilities have served as a model for imitation, which I have done my best to produce in these pages. I also want to thank the Americanist reading group at Western for providing me with much valuable feedback as I was drafting my second chapter. In this regard, I would like to especially thank Thy Phu and Joshua Schuster, whose mentor- and friendship I cherish. Michael Sloane deserves a special mention. As a colleague and friend, Mike is rivaled by none. For four years he has put up with my nonsense, and for that I am eternally grateful. Finally, I want to thank David Greven, who provided me with a generous measure of intellectual encouragement and professional support at the meeting of the American Literature Association in Boston, May 2013. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments.............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v List of Plates ..................................................................................................................... vii Introduction: Preposterous America ................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Cruising Thoreau, Cruising Nature ................................................................. 36 I. Introduction: Queering the Trajectory of Thoreau Criticism .................................... 36 II. Woodland Sauntering and Textual Cruising ............................................................ 52 III. Cruising Thoreau .................................................................................................... 64 IV. Cruising the Dead ................................................................................................... 75 V. The Geometry of Cruising ....................................................................................... 82 VI. The “Something More” of Cruising: The Lowly Life ............................................ 88 VII. The Pond................................................................................................................ 96 VIII. The Cut ............................................................................................................... 105 IX. Conclusion: There Can Be No Textual Relation(?) .............................................. 115 Chapter 2: Architecture and the Queer Stylistics of Herman Melville ........................... 120 I. Introduction: Of Symmetry and Ambiguity ............................................................ 120 II. The Origins of Melville’s Queer Style ................................................................... 129 III. The Preposterous and Minor Architecture in Melville’s “I and My Chimney” ... 142 IV. Melville’s Follies .................................................................................................. 159 V. The Blessed and the Banned .................................................................................. 164 VI. Conclusion: After-pleasure ................................................................................... 172 Chapter 3: Hawthorne’s Children ................................................................................... 176 I. Introduction: The Baby-House ................................................................................ 176 II. Sympathy and Sodometry ...................................................................................... 189 III. The Unconscious Child: Meaning Reversed......................................................... 196 IV. Constructing Hawthorne’s Child-Scapes .............................................................. 205 V. Small and Big Appetites: Childish and Bestial Desires in “Little Annie’s Ramble” ..................................................................................................................................... 217 VI. Aping .................................................................................................................... 235 VII. Consuming Children............................................................................................ 240 VIII. Stalking Youth: “The Village Uncle” ................................................................ 247 IX. The Texture of Fire ............................................................................................... 252 X. Hawthorne’s “Salty” Avunculate ..........................................................................
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