1 VEXED TONGUES: A TRANSLINGUAL APPROACH TO EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY ATLANTIC LITERATURE A dissertation presented by Emily Lauren Artiano to The Department of English In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the field of English Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts April, 2015 2 VEXED TONGUES: A TRANSLINGUAL APPROACH TO EIGHTEENTH- AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY ATLANTIC LITERATURE by Emily Lauren Artiano ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities of Northeastern University April, 2015 3 ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on the phenomenon of “linguistic colonization” or colonization by way of language, as for instance, when colonized diasporic Africans and Native Americans were forced to abandon their mother tongues in favor of English. Yet rather than purporting a unidirectional story of conquering space and cohering place through language, my project seeks to make visible the nuances of linguistic colonization and the multidirectional influences of language through literature. To analyze the complex, “middle ground” effects of moving across languages, this project borrows the term “translingual” from contemporary writing studies —a term that describes how language is reshaped in time and space and accounts for the rhetorical authority garnered (or ceded) by writers working in one or multiple languages. This project analyzes the linguistic exchanges in works of colonial writers such as Mary Rowlandson—the Puritan-captive of Native Americans turned author, the works of early national non-native English speaking authors such as Samson Occom and Phillis Wheatley (the first Native American man and the first African American woman to publish writings in English, respectively), and the works of antebellum authors, such as Herman Melville. In bringing together works from the colonial and early national periods, this project examines the continuum of linguistic colonization as well as the transition from colonial to national accounts of language in America. In the colonial period, authors often denigrated languages outside of British English but still relied on these languages to situate themselves in a new colonial order. In the early national period, however, print culture reflected an English-based reading and writing public that actively ignored the existence of other languages in the name of national cohesion. Nonetheless, 4 across these periods, authors and consumers participated in complex translingual writing and reading practices. Focusing on situated, dynamic linguistic exchanges in this literature offers new possibilities and a fuller picture for understanding how the space of colonial and early national America was conceived, represented, and constituted. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is the result of the hard work, guidance, time, and support of many. First, I thank my wonderful dissertation advisor, chair, and mentor, Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, whose wisdom and support influenced every page of this document. I also would like to thank Professor Chris Gallagher and Professor Theo Davis for serving on my dissertation committee and Professor Ivy Schweitzer for serving as my outside reader. They have all provided thorough and valuable feedback every step of the way. I thank my exam committee members, Professor Patricia Sullivan and Professor Nicole Aljoe, for guiding my field statements and reading lists. The time and generosity of many other professors have influenced this project in many ways. The English Department staff, specifically Melissa Daigle, Linda Collins, and Jean Duddy, has been invaluable during my time at Northeastern. I had the opportunity to work through my project with other scholars surrounding the theme of space and place this year through the Humanities Center Fellowship. I thank the Humanities Center and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities—specifically Dean Uta Poiger, Professor Tim Cresswell, and Professor Lori Lefkovitz—for this gift of time, and I thank the other fellows for their time and suggestions. The fellowship experience greatly contributed to the final product in the pages that follow. Throughout the past seven years, the English graduate student community has in many ways made me the scholar and teacher I am today. I thank my dissertation group, in years past and present, and close friends for all of their suggestions and support: Ben Doyle, Elizabeth Hopwood, Greg Cass, Jeffrey Cottrell, David Ober, Ethan Whittet, Danielle Skeehan, Max White, Sarah Hastings, Jessica Nelson, Amanda Runyan, Kate 6 Simpkins, and Arjun Poudel. Thank you to those in the department who have always been there to read, comfort, and advise: Duyen Nguyen, Lauren Thacker, Jenna Sciuto, Genie Giaimo, Lana Cook, Victoria Papa, Charlie Lesh, Shun Kiang, and Jeremy Gillette-Newman. Above all, I would not be where or who I am today without the constant encouragement and unconditional love of my wonderful family. Thank you to Katia, for being the best friend and cheerleader anyone could ask for; to Daniel, for reading everything I sent his way and for believing in me always; to Benji, for being a constant source of affection and pride; and to Mom and Dad—your advice, support, and love have been the most important thing in my life, and this dissertation is dedicated to you. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Table of Contents 7 Introduction 8 Chapter 1: “The Vast and Desolate Wilderness”: Mary Rowlandson Remaking Language and Colonial Space 34 Chapter 2: “Her Language was a fort of Jargon”: Mapping Linguistic Difference onto Bodies in British Caribbean Literature 115 Chapter 3: Literary Negotiation of a National Language: Making and “Breaking English” 159 Chapter 4: The Haitian Revolution and Creolizing American Literature 214 8 Introduction Records from John Smith and Ralph Hamor as early as 1613 recount the process of teaching English to Native Americans, most famously Pocahontas—notably a woman of color. In his Generall Historie, Smith reports to Queen Anne that Pocahontas “reject[ed] her barbarous condition, was married to an English gentleman, with whom at this present she is in England; the first Christian ever of that Nation, the first Virginian ever spake English, or had a child in marriage by an Englishman” (qtd. in Slevin 68). Smith praises Pocahontas’s rejection of her “barbarous condition” as well as her acquisition of English, adoption of English kinship, and conversion to Christianity. Pocahontas’s enculturation makes her historically visible, and according to Smith, admirable. Contemporary representations of the John Smith and Pocahontas story re- inscribe this narrative. The 1995 Disney Pocahontas film depicts a scene of cultural encounter in which John Smith teaches Pocahontas to say “hello.” She in turn teaches him to say “hau,” to which Smith responds, “I like hello better.” Their interactions take place in English (this of course makes practical sense for the Anglophone movie audience), but the movie makes a point of explaining it. When Pocahontas “do[esn’t] understand a word [Smith is] saying,” the willow tree sings that she just has to “listen to [her] heart and [she] will understand.” The relationship between spirituality and language acquisition in the movie resonates with the relationship between religion and language acquisition expressed in the reports of Hamor, Smith, and many others in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Once a Native American converted to Christianity, the colonizer claimed, English would come much more easily. This dominant narrative has been sustained hundreds of years from the initial reports, which were invested in 9 representing colonization in a particular way, to the movie, which seems equally invested in its representation of the colonial project. That is, this sustaining story of colonization suggests that British colonists unidirectionally imposed English on colonized peoples in the Americas for the benefit of all. My dissertation offers an alternative to this dominant narrative; it attends to the multiple languages present in Anglophone colonial and early national American literature to offer a new account of language and colonialism—one that foregrounds the complexity of cultural exchange and multilingualism in the Atlantic world during these periods. While the movie and the seventeenth century reports depict these moments of language imposition as harmless, necessary, and even benevolent, contemporary critic James Slevin characterizes this imposition of English as “linguistic colonization” or colonization by way of language, as for instance, when colonized Native Americans and diasporic Africans were forced to abandon their mother tongues in favor of English. For Slevin, linguistic colonization aims to confirm the colonizer’s own language, which simultaneously implies the colonizer’s control of the larger situation of colonization itself. In the case of Native Americans in Tidewater, English education was designed to produce the model “civil” Indian. Thus, an Indian’s cultural habits, religion, and appearance would change to better reflect the identity of one whose language was English. Slevin explains, From the very beginning of colonization, English technology was used as a way of dramatizing superiority. John Smith reports various Tidewater tribes as acknowledging that the English God and so the English