Anglo-American Non½ctional Narrative in the Nineteenth Century
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On Western Waters: Anglo-American Non½ctional Narrative in the Nineteenth Century Rolena Adorno Abstract: Anglo-American westward expansion provided a major impulse to the development of the young United States’ narrative tradition. Early U.S. writers also looked to the South, that is, to the Span- ish New World and, in some cases, to Spain itself. Washington Irving’s “A History of the Life and Voy- ages of Christopher Columbus” (1828), the ½rst full-length biography of the admiral in English, in- augurated the trend, and Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” (1883) transformed it by focusing on the life and lives of the Mississippi River Valley and using an approach informed by Miguel de Cer- vantes’s “Don Quijote de la Mancha.” From Irving’s “discovery of America” to Twain’s tribute to the disappearing era of steamboat travel and commerce on the Mississippi, the tales about “western waters,” told via their authors’ varied engagements with Spanish history and literature, constitute a seldom acknowledged dimension in Anglo-America’s non½ctional narrative literary history. Anglo-American expansion into the West and far West of North America provided a major impulse to the development of the young United States’ ROLENA ADORNO, a Fellow of the narrative tradition. Travel accounts ½gured promi- American Academy since 2003, is nently, and most, from Washington Irving’s A Tour the Reuben Post Halleck Professor on the Prairies (1835), to Francis Parkman’s The Ore- of Spanish and Chair of the Depart- gon Trail (1847–1849), to Mark Twain’s Roughing It ment of Spanish and Portuguese at (1872), looked westward. In fact, U.S. non½ctional Yale University. Her recent publi- literature was born on the lands and waters of west- cations include The Polemics of Pos- session in Spanish American Narrative ern exploration. This phenomenon inspired the in- (2007), which was awarded the ternationally renowned Argentine writer and bib- Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize by liophile Jorge Luis Borges to remark in 1967, while the Modern Language Association, holding the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of De Guancane a Macondo: estudios de Poetry at Harvard, that in the United States, even literatura hispanoamericana (2008), the American West seemed to have been invented and Colonial Latin American Litera- in New England.1 ture: A Very Short Introduction (2011). In 2009, President Obama appoint- America’s early writers looked not only to the ed her to a ½ve-year membership West but also to the South, that is, to the Spanish on the National Council on the New World and, in notable cases, to Spain. Wash- Humanities. ington Irving’s A History of the Life and Voyages of © 2012 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences 61 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00129 by guest on 03 October 2021 Anglo- Christopher Columbus (1828), the ½rst full- Parkman (1823–1893). Parkman did not American length biography of the admiral in English, participate in the contemporary vogue for Non½ctional Narrative inaugurated the trend, and Mark Twain’s studying things Spanish; however, like in the Life on the Mississippi (1883) transformed it Irving and Hispanist historian William Nineteenth Century with a critical but tolerant reflection on Hickling Prescott (1796–1859), he made the life and lives of the Mississippi River enthusiastic references to knight errantry Valley and an approach informed by Mi- and “ocean chivalry.” Twain admired Park- guel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote de la Man- man for his astute ½rsthand accounts of cha. While Washington Irving (1783–1859) the Oglala Sioux in The Oregon Trail,6 and focused on the earliest Spanish explora- he was a faithful reader of Parkman’s La tion and settlement of American lands, Salle and the Discovery of the Great West (1869, Mark Twain (1835–1910) strove to give the 1879), which was of signal importance in United States its own experience, honed in chronicling “western waters.”7 Twain no the heyday of steamboat travel and river- doubt chose Parkman because the Bos- boat commerce on the Mississippi. tonian evoked the unfathomable, dynam- For Irving, Columbus provided the op- ic Mississippi River with great respect, portunity to pursue serious history-writ- while British travelers to America often ing on a subject of national interest.2 expressed contempt for it. One of them Irving’s benefactor, diplomat and editor called this most formidable of waterways of the North American Review Alexander H. the “great common sewer of the Western Everett, lauded Irving’s patriotic fervor America.” and his “pretension to be viewed as the Accounts of Spanish exploration and valorous knight, who was called, in the conquest, compiled during the sixteenth order of destiny . to achieve the great and to nineteenth centuries and translated hitherto unaccomplished adventure of es- into other European languages, were im- tablishing a purely American literary rep- mensely popular in the late eighteenth and utation of the ½rst order.”3 Twain’s close early nineteenth centuries. Irving fondly friend and editor of The Atlantic Monthly, recalled reading them in his youth, citing William Dean Howells, was of the opin- late in life one of his early favorites, a ion that Twain considered Life on the Mis- multivolume compendium prologued by sissippi his greatest work. Howells re- Samuel Johnson and entitled The World marked that as a reader Twain had always Displayed; or A Curious Collection of Voyages been drawn to books that “had the root of and Travels, Selected from the Writers of All the human matter in it” and “gave him Nations, in Which the Conjectures and Inter- life at ½rst-hand”: namely, history, auto- polations of Several Vain Editors and Transla- biography, and ½rsthand accounts of trav- tors are Expunged. Inspired by this tradition el or captivity.4 Although it is hardly re- and by Spanish naval historian and direc- membered and seldom read today, Irving’s tor of Spain’s Royal Academy of History romantic Columbus enjoyed immense Martín Fernández de Navarrete’s path- popularity throughout most of the nine- breaking publication of the corpus of teenth century and beyond.5 Twain, mean- Columbus documents (1825–1837), Irving while, was giving the lie to the idea that inaugurated the American trend of writ- any account of exploration or travel by for- ing on Spanish New World exploration eigners could be considered “innocent.” and settlement with his Columbus.8 Pres- The bridge (to use a river metaphor) that cott became the most notable of the nine- connects Washington Irving and Mark teenth-century Hispanists writing narra- Twain is the romantic historian Francis tive history, and his works from the 1830s 62 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00129 by guest on 03 October 2021 through the 1850s built America’s basic United States ample room for maneuver Rolena Spanish bookshelf: The Reign of Ferdinand as it pursued its own “manifest” national Adorno and Isabella (1837), The Conquest of Mexico destiny.14 In that context, the ½gure of a (1843), The Conquest of Peru (1847), and solitary genius and entrepreneur carry- The Reign of Philip II (1855, 1858) would ing European civilization over new fron- guide Americans’ thinking about Spain tiers to uncharted lands resonated well and its New World conquests for more with the aspirations of a young America. than a century.9 Other U.S. historians, Irving’s Columbus dramatized, in short, principally Parkman, John Lothrop Mot- the model of the North American “self- ley, and George Bancroft, created monu- made man” who could do good for others mental histories of the French, the Dutch, by doing well for himself.15 and the English in the Americas.10 As Irving portrayed him, Columbus “singularly combined the practical and the Colonial times in British North Ameri- poetical”: like a nautical knight-errant, ca witnessed a widening interest in Span- his discoveries “enlightened the ignorance ish history and culture through the study of the age, guided conjecture to certainty, of the Spanish language, the collection of and dispelled the very darkness with Spanish materials for libraries, and the which he had been obliged to struggle.” presentation of Spanish themes in the lit- This new Columbus possessed an “ardent erary and historical arts. After U.S. inde- and enthusiastic imagination which threw pendence, Thomas Jefferson promoted the a magni½cence over his whole course of study of the Spanish language, anticipat- thought.” Quixotic but not mad, his imag- ing the development of trade with Latin ination “instead of exhausting itself in America and encouraging linguistic mas- idle flights, lent aid to his judgment, and tery because “the ancient part of Ameri- enabled him to form conclusions at which can history is written chiefly in Spanish.”11 common minds could never have arrived, America’s early writers took up the chal- nay, which they could not perceive when lenge. The period from the 1820s to the pointed out.”16 Irving endowed the larg- 1860s was particularly productive for the er Columbus story with a satisfying tele- growth of Anglo-American Hispanism; in ology: the immediate triumph of Colum- addition to Irving’s and Prescott’s histo- bus, his subsequent defeat, and, post- ries, the scholarship of George Ticknor, humously, his (almost) imperishable re- the poetry of William Cullen Bryant, and nown.17 Irving highlighted Columbus’s the ½ction of Herman Melville stand out.12 illusions about having arrived at the Miguel de Cervantes’s El ingenioso hidalgo threshold of Asia and locating the terres- Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) had trial paradise, and he endowed his hero been read since the eighteenth century, with a blithe unawareness of the poten- and references to the novel and its protag- tial historical and human consequences onists can be found among Anglo-Ameri- of his epoch-making actions.