Encyclopedia of American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes
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Encyclopedia of American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes Jill B. Gidmark Editor Greenwood Press Encyclopedia of American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes “Stowing a Topsail,” 1893 Frank Brangwyn (1867–1956), illustrator Charles Wesley Chadwick (1861–?), engraver Reprinted with permission from Mystic Seaport Museum, Inc. Encyclopedia of American Literature of the Sea and Great Lakes Edited by JILL B. GIDMARK Editorial Board MARY K. BERCAW EDWARDS ATTILIO FAVORINI JOSEPH FLIBBERT ROBERT D. MADISON MARY MALLOY HASKELL SPRINGER Greenwood Press Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encyclopedia of American literature of the sea and Great Lakes / edited by Jill B. Gidmark. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–30148–4 (alk. paper) 1. American literature—Encyclopedias. 2. American literature—Great Lakes Region—History and criticism. 3. Sea in literature—Encyclopedias. 4. Seafaring life in literature—Encyclopedias. 5. Ocean travel in literature—Encyclopedias. 6. Great Lakes—In literature—Encyclopedias. I. Gidmark, Jill B. PS169.S42E53 2001 810.9'355—dc21 00–025112 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright ᭧ 2001 by Jill B. Gidmark All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–025112 ISBN: 0–313–30148–4 First published in 2001 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America TM The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Copyright Acknowledgments The editor and the publisher gratefully acknowledge permission for use of the following material: Excerpts from poems reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright ᭧ 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the Pres- ident and Fellows of Harvard College. Excerpts from a letter reprinted by permission of the publishers from The Letters of Emily Dickinson edited by Thomas H. Johnson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright ᭧ 1958, 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Excerpts from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by T. H. Johnson, Copyright 1929, 1935 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; copyright ᭧ renewed 1957, 1963 by Mary L. Hampson. By permission of Little, Brown and Company. To the memory of Joseph T. Flibbert (1938–1999), editorial board member, scholar, friend: A very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us. —Nathaniel Hawthorne of Herman Melville Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea....[A]t sea, the man is near you—at your side—you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss. Then, too, at sea—to use a homely but expressive phrase—you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own and one is taken sud- denly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss. —Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years before the Mast Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xv The Encyclopedia 3 Literary/Historical Timeline 491 Selected Bibliography 495 Index 499 The Editorial Board 529 About the Contributors 533 Preface This reference work of maritime literature has been designed to appeal to scholars and to casual readers alike; it seeks to get concise, factual infor- mation into the hands of the hobbyist at the same time that it provides a useful tool for the academic researcher. Its aim is to deepen awareness of the value of the sea environment and the sea experience in American life and letters by identifying and surveying works of imaginative literature that were “inspired” one way or another by the great bodies of water known as the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Arctic Oceans and the Great Lakes. Although the encyclopedia selections have doubtless been influenced by a number of subjective factors, the members of my editorial board and I have tried to steer a course along pragmatic lines. We first surveyed highly regarded maritime scholarship: Jeanne-Marie Santraud’s La Mer et le Roman Ame´ricain dans la Premie`re Moitie´ du Dix-Neuvie`me Sie`cle (1972), Thomas Philbrick’s James Fenimore Cooper and the Development of American Sea Fiction (1961), Haskell Springer’s America and the Sea: A Literary History (1995), Myron J. Smith Jr. and Robert C. Weller’s Sea Fiction Guide (1976), Bert Bender’s Sea-Brothers: The Tradition of American Sea Fiction from Moby-Dick to the Present (1988), among others. The final list of 459 entries was culled, in large part, from bibliographies within these sources. The entries, which vary in length from under 50 words to over 2,000, consider American literature of all periods and genres: fiction, creative non- fiction, drama, and poetry. I have also included naval history and autobi- ography where there has been a compelling literary link, and I have aimed to balance entries on early established works of literary merit with recent publications that seem capable of standing the test of time. The categories included are authors, published works, characters, themes, vessels, ports, and geographical regions. In author entries I sought neither x PREFACE complete biography nor exhaustive publication citations but aimed instead to highlight maritime experience and to survey those works that referred to the sea in significant ways. I have included some well-known authors who are not usually considered writers of the sea, such as Robert Frost, Gary Snyder, and Stephen King, to acknowledge their attention to the maritime. Title entries focus on the role that the sea plays within a work of literature, tracking the sea as setting, theme, or motif. Most title entries situate a work within a larger literature-of-the-sea context. Literary character entries ex- plore the maritime significance of those figures. Entries on themes, vessels, ports, and geographical regions discuss the symbolic and representational import of major literary references. While Derek Walcott has defined “America” as the territory from Green- land to Tierra del Fuego, we have used instead the more commonly held definition of America as the United States and its waters, expanding the locus by drawing from bordering Canadian and Caribbean literary sources published in English. Mexican and Central and South American non-English writings are excluded. A few entries on themes with a broader global sweep, such as Women at Sea and Ghosts and Ghost Ship Legends, include some European references for contextual and/or historical perspective; British In- fluences on American Sea Literature intentionally reaches outside American shores. In keeping with Rudyard Kipling’s assessment of the Great Lakes as a “fully accredited ocean,” I have featured these waters in several entries but have not considered other American lakes or rivers. Acknowledging that the seagoing enterprise has traditionally been the domain of white male privi- lege, the historical picture is fleshed out by including ethnic and gender perspectives with entries on African American, American Indian, Asian American, and Latino/a Literatures of the Sea and a focused entry on Women at Sea. Aiming for more breadth than depth, I opted for a greater number of short entries over a smaller number of lengthy ones. I strove for consistency among entries and to that end encouraged all 159 contributors to present their information with as little critical bias or theoretical interpretation as possible. I have not attempted, however, to homogenize the contributors’ unique voices, styles, or perspectives. Entries are arranged alphabetically. Cross-references are indicated by an asterisk following the name of another entry; further reading citations are provided for the more significant entries. A literary/historical timeline ap- pears in the back matter to illuminate the context of the entries, and a selective general bibliography has been provided. Acknowledgments A project of this design and scope is the collaboration of many hands and minds. Chief among these are the members of my editorial board, who assisted me from the beginning on all aspects of the form and content of the encyclopedia: Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, Attilio Favorini, Joseph Flib- bert, Robert Madison, Mary Malloy, and Haskell Springer. Our survey of 459 entries includes some that we wrote ourselves and others for which we targeted knowledgeable colleagues, grad students, friends, and, in a few cases, family members. Their eyes and minds were indispensable to my ed- iting process; I could not have wished for a more collegial or dedicated crew on this five-year voyage. To Mary K. Bercaw Edwards, above all, heart-deep gratitude for acting as my assistant editor. To all 159 contributors, many of whom provided more than one revision to meet our wishes and constraints, some of whose entries I had to shorten or modify at the eleventh hour, your professionalism and good humor buoyed us up: deep thanks for your schol- arship and participation.