INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photo­ graph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the original text directly from the copy submitted. Thus, some dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from a computer printer. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there sp’e missing pagSb, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyrighted material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are re­ produced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each oversize page is available as one exposure on a standard 35 mm slide or as a 17" x 23" black and white photographic print for an additional charge. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. 35 mm slides or 6 " X 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Accessing theUMI World's Information since 1938 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA Order Number 8822869 The criticism of American literature: The powers and limits of an institutional practice Kayes, Jamie R. Barlowe, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1988 Copyright ©1988 by Kayes, Jamie R. Barlowe. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 PLEASE NOTE: In ail cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark V . 1. Glossy photographs or pages. 2. Colored illustrations, paper or______ print 3. Photographs with dark background_____ 4. illustrations are poor copy______ 5. Pages with black marks, not original copy. 6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page. 7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several_______ pages 8. Print exceeds margin requirements______ 9. Tightly bound copy with print lost_______ in spine 10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print. 11. Page(s)____________lacking when material received, and not available from school or author. 12. Page(s)____________seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows. 13. Two pages num bered . Text follows. 14. Curling and wrinkled pages_______ 15. Dissertation contains pages with print at a slant, filmed as received_________ 16. Other_______________________________________________________________________ UMI THE CRITICISM OF AMERICAN LITERATURE: THE POWERS AND LIMITS OF AN INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Jamie R. Barlowe Kayes» B.A., M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 1988 Dissertation Committee: Approved by D. R. Barnes S. Fink Adviser J. P. Phelan Department of English Copyright by Jamie B. Barlowe Kayes 1988 To James Phelan 11 VITA April 4, 1943 ........ .. Born - New Albany, Indiana 1968................ .. B.A., Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 1983. ............ M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1981-1987 ................... O.T.A.; 6.R.A., Department of English, The Ohio State University 1987-88 ..................... Presidential Fellow, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS "1862 Diary of Sophia Hawthorne,” with Thomas Woodson and James Rubino. Studies in American Renaissance (Spring, 1988. "Hawthorne’s Black Veil," in Proceedings of the Forum. Research and Scholarly Activities Forum. 25 April, 1987. The Ohio State University Press: The Ohio State University. The Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Vols. XVII and XVIII, Assistant Textual Editor. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1987, 1988. "Reading Against the Grain: Powers and Limits of Feminist Criticism of American Narratives." Forthcoming in The Journal of Narrative Technique. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Fields: Literary Theory; Adviser, James Phelan. Studies In: Prose Fiction; Adviser, James Phelan. American Literature; Adviser, Thomas Woodson Renaissance Literature; Adviser, David Frantz. Medieval Literature; Adviser, Lisa Kiser. Ill TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION................................. ii VITA ................................................... ill INTRODUCTION ......................................... 1 CHAPTER PAGE I. Amerlcan-ness Defined: Cultural Criticism. 15 II. Amerioan-ness Personalized: Biographical Criticism . .............. 65 III. Amerioan-ness Radicalized: The Perspective of Deconstruction . 108 IV. Amerioan-ness Revised: The Perspective of Feminism.....................................159 V. Amerioan-ness as "Shaping Cause": The Concept of Genre............................ 212 CONCLUSION............................................. 264 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................... 276 IV INTRODUCTION The "Tyrannous Eye": The Origins of Amerioan-ness I look in vain for the poet whom I describe . We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable [American] materials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer; then in the Middle Age; then in Calvinism . If I have not found that combination of gifts in my countrymen which I seek, neither could I aid myself to fix the idea of the poet by reading now and then . But I am not wise enough for a national criticism . ["The Poet," Ralph Waldo Emerson] This study began as a way to understand the enormous influence of a group of critics of American literature who, in the early years of this century, established a critical agenda which remains virtually unchallenged. The bedrock of their agenda— the uniqueness of our national literature— was to legitimize the institutional study of texts written in America. This literature, when compared with English and European literature, had been considered inferior by scholars. Avoiding the assertion that American texts could stand alongside such "classics" as Beowulf and The Fairie Queene. critics gave them another status: in effect, they argued that the study of American literature could yield valuable historical and cultural knowledge. Vernon Farrington admits his participation in 1 directing the course of institutional criticism of American literature in his landmark study of 1927, Main 1 Currents in American Thought: I have undertaken to give some account of the genesis and development in American letters of certain germinal ideas that have come to be reckoned traditionally American— how they came into being here, how they were opposed, and what influence they have exerted in determining the form and scope of our characteristic ideals and institutions. In pursuing such a task, I have chosen to follow the broad path of our political, economic, and social development, rather than the narrower belletristic; and the main divisions of the study have been fixed by forces that are anterior to literary schools and movements, creating the body of ideas from which literary culture eventually springs (p. iii). Institutional criticism looked back at American texts, not to see richness and variety— in addition to knowledge— or even to envision an aesthetics which could appreciate a literature written under diverse circumstances by various writers, but instead to see a unified body of texts with the single intention of producing a uniquely American literature. As Robert Spiller notes in his "Address to the Reader," prefatory to 2 Literary History of the United States (1948): Our national unity does not and cannot depend upon blood or upon inherited tendencies. Thus very naturally our literature, which is a record of our experience, has been deeply, often subconsciously, aware of its reponsibility in the making of a nation from a complex of peoples in voluntary union. It has been an inquiring, an exploratory, literature from the beginning— asking questions of the New World, challenging the effects of sudden release and expansion upon the spiritual nature, delighting in adventure . It has been a literature profoundly influenced by ideals and by practices developed in democratic living. It has been intensely conscious of the needs of the common man, and equally conscious of the aspirations of the individual in such a democracy as we have known here. It has been humanitarian. It has been, on the whole, an optimistic literature, made virile by criticism of the actual in comparison with the ideal (pp. xv-xvi). Despite the appeal that Spiller*s words have, the idea that there could have been commonality of intention on the part of American writers, either consciously or subconsciously, or that the literature of an entire nation could be summed up so easily, seems reductive in light of our knowledge that American authors wrote at various times in various places, prcducing a variety of texts which call for various responses from readers. For example, to lump Emerson's essays with Hawthorne's tales, and Irving's sketches with Melville's metaphysical fiction and Mark Twain's humor denies any such variety— demands, in fact, the repression of it. F. 0. Matthiessen in American Renaissance (1941) describes concerns such as mine when he says that the "common reader . does not live by trends alone; he reads books, whether of the present or past, 3 because they have an immediate