Transnational Transports: Identity, Community, and Place in German-American Narratives from 1750s-1850s DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Rebekah Ann Starnes, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2012 Dissertation Committee: Professor Jared Gardner, Advisor Professor Susan Williams Professor Chadwick Allen Copyright by Rebekah Ann Starnes 2012 Abstract German-Americans were the most populous and influential non-British immigrant group in the British colonies and in the early nation. In order to fully understand early American history, culture, and literature, it is crucial to explore the literature produced by this group. Nonetheless, the sheer number of literary works produced by Germans in America makes such a task as difficult as it is important. This project participates in the recovery of German-American literature by focusing on German-language stories written in and about American contact zones. I begin in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania and follow new waves of immigrants south and west in the nineteenth century. I argue that German-American writers used transnational genres (the captivity narrative, the frontier romance, and the urban mystery novel) to articulate the transports and traumas of their transnational experiences. In Chapters 1 and 2, I look at German-language captivity narratives of the French and Indian War. I argue that writing captivity narratives allowed German settlers to negotiate their culturally liminal place in Pennsylvania as a racially privileged but culturally marginalized group, to come to terms with the transnational traumas of captivity and religious persecution, and to define and police constantly shifting communal boundaries. Chapter 3 focuses on the frontier romances of Austrian-American novelist Charles Sealsfield, whose work deals with the transnational pleasures of an imaginary empty frontier. Sealsfield alleviates national guilt over Indian removal by ii alleging that southwestern farmers and pioneers are the most “legitimate” Americans, more so even than Northerners and Easterners. He nonetheless suggests that unlike Indians and Africans, Yankees and European immigrants can gain legitimacy if they undergo a process of national regeneration through marriage, which operates as a metaphor for democracy in his work. In Chapter 4, I look at urban mystery novels of the 1850s. Like the authors in my first chapters, the writers of these novels also struggled with transnational traumas (in this case, the poverty, overcrowding, crime, racism, and corruption that plagued the multicultural and multilingual American city). This genre allowed them to articulate these traumas and to write themselves into American history as social and political reformers. German-Americans have never been a unified group, and their literature is as vast and diverse as they are. By focusing on transnational genres written in and about contact zones, this project sheds light on an important thematic thread running through the larger body of work: a shared sense of anxiety surrounding community, identity, legitimacy, and place. These are not just immigrant concerns, either; they are common themes in the larger literary traditions of both America and Germany. These narratives are thus transnational in another sense of the term: they demonstrate thematic affinities between two national literatures that both countries’ literary critics once believed “exceptional,” thus helping us continue to move past national exceptionalism as an interpretive lens. iii Dedication This document is dedicated to my parents, David and Sharon Starnes, for always believing in me, and to my husband, Richard Schaper, whose unwavering support made it possible. iv Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank my committee. It was my advisor, Jared Gardner, who first exposed me to the exciting world of early American literature when I was a first-year Master’s student. I’d like to thank him for that introduction, and for eight years of patience, encouragement, and guidance. I would also like to thank my committee members, Chad Allen and Susan Williams, for their continued support. Without it, I doubt I would have made it past candidacy. I would also like to thank the wonderful people at the Society of Early Americanists. I presented an early version of my first chapter at the 2010 Early American Borderlands conference, which was co-sponsored by the SEA, and part of my second chapter at the Seventh Biennial Conference in Philadelphia in March of last year. The feedback and support I received following these presentations was invaluable. v Vita 1999................................................................Haltom High School, Haltom City, Texas 2003................................................................B.A. English, Texas Tech University 2005................................................................M.A. English, The Ohio State University 2003 to 2009 ..................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University 2009 to 2011…………………………………Adjunct Faculty, Department of English, Columbus State Community College 2011 to present………………………………Annual Contract Faculty, Department of English, Columbus State Community College Publications “From the Periodical Archives: The Entertaining Companion—Philadelphisches Magazin, The First German-American Literary Journal,” American Periodicals 19.1 (Spring 2009). Fields of Study Major Field: English vi Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... v Vita ..................................................................................................................................... vi Introduction: German-American Literature: The People and the Stories ........................... 1 Chapter 1: From Instigators to Victims and Scapegoats: German-language Captivity Narratives of the French and Indian War .......................................................................... 29 Chapter 2: On Captivity and Adaptivity: The Narrative of Regina Leininger ................. 71 Chapter 3: Union: Marriage and (Trans)Nationality in the Novels of Charles Sealsfield ......................................................................................................................................... 127 Chapter 4: Solving the American Urban Mystery .......................................................... 177 Afterword..………………………………………………………………………...……231 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………237 vii Introduction: German-American Literature: The People and the Stories Multilingual America It is already commonplace to begin any discussion of multilingual America with some basic facts. Nonetheless, these facts remain necessary starting points. The central fact is that America has never been a monolingual nation. The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution are both notably silent on a national language, and although the Declaration was written in English, it was immediately translated into German, as German (not English) was the primary language spoken in Philadelphia at the time. In fact, when the Declaration was drafted, only 40 percent of the newly declared country spoke English (Shell, Multilingual Anthology Afterword, 688). It should be no surprise then that American literature has never been monolingual either. Werner Sollors, in his introduction to the Multilingual Anthology of American Literature, notes that “in Harvard University’s library system alone, there are more than 120,000 imprints published in the United States that were written in scores of languages other than English; they range from Native American texts to Spanish, French, Dutch, and Russian colonial writings, from immigrant literature in German and in all European, many Asian, and some African languages to French and Arabic works written by African Americans” (4). Multilingualism is not just part of the nation’s past, either. According to recent census data, there are 55.4 million non-English speaking people in America today, which 1 is 20 percent of the population. Scholars of American literature in the early days of the field acknowledged America’s multilingual legacy.1 Why then, do modern Americans (including many academics) insist on pretending that our country—and our literature—is English-only? Werner Sollors and Marc Shell suggest that it is our national obsession with race and ethnicity that allows us to ignore issues of linguistic diversity. Most modern American universities promote multiculturalism, but conveniently ignore the intrinsic connection between language and culture. Often, it is merely a matter of convenience: it is easier for most of us to study and teach multicultural literature (for example, the literature of Chinese-Americans who write in English), than to teach multilingual literature (like Chinese-American literature that was actually written in Chinese). By ignoring multilingual America, however, we are doing more than just making things easier for ourselves. After all, when we begin to acknowledge