Notes and References The following abbreviations are used in citing periodicals: AL American Literature AQ American Quarterly ELH English Literary History JAH Journal qf American History ]AS Journal qf American Studies MLN Modern Language Notes NAR North American Review NEQ New England Quarterly NCF Nineteenth Century Fiction NLH New Literary History NLR New Left Review NYH New York History MP Modern Philology PMLA Publications qf the Modern Language Association PQ Philological Quarterly YFS Yale French Studies References to the works of Freud are to the Standard Edition qf the Complete Psychological Works qf Sigmund Freud, 23 vols, ed. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1953-73). Unless otherwise specified, references to the works of Cooper, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville and Poe are to the editions listed below. James Fenimore Cooper, The Works qf James Fenimore Cooper, 32 vols, The Mohawk Edition (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1896). -, The Letters and Journals qf James Fenimore Cooper, 6 vols, ed. James F. Beard (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960-68). Ralph W. Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols (London: George Bell, 1876). Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Centenary Edition of the Works qf Nathaniel Hawthorne, 13 vols, eds William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce, Claude M. Simpson (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1962-1977). Herman Melville, The Letters of Herman Melville, eds Merrell R. Davis and William H. Gilman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960). -, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life. The Writings qf Herman Melville, The Northwestern-Newberry Edition, eds Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. 106 Notes and References 153 Thomas Tanselle (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, I968) vol. 1. -,Mardi, and a Vl!)lage Thither. The Writings of Herman Melville, The Northwestern­ Newberry Edition, eds Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker, G. Thomas Tanselle (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, I970) vol. III. -, White Jacket, or The World in a Man if War. The Standard Edition if the Works of Herman Melville (New York: Russell and Russell, I963) vol. IV. -, The Piazza Tales, The Standard Edition if the Works ifHerman Melville (New York: Russell and Russell, I963) vol. x. -, Billy Budd, and Other Prose Pieces. The Standard Edition if the Works of Herman Melville (New York: Russell and Russell, I963) vol. XIII. -, Moby-Dick, or The Whale, The Norton Critical Edition, eds Harrison Hayford and Hershel Parker (New York: W. W. Norton, I967). Edgar A. Poe, The Complete Works if Edgar Allan Poe, ed.James A. Harrison, I 7 vols (I9o6; rpt. New York: AMS Press, I965). I THE NATIONAL TASK 1. Herman Melville, White Jacket, Standard Edition, IV, p. I89. 2. See Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution (New York: Harcourt Brace, I955) pp. 89- 96; J. Barrington Moore Jr., The Social Origins if Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making if the Modern World (Harmondsworth: Penguin, I96g) pp. I I I-sS. On the relationship of literary production to efforts to establish a national consciousness see Benjamin T. Spencer, The Q_uest for Nationality: An American Literary Campaign (Syracuse University Press, 1957); Howard Mumford Jones, The Theory of the American Novel (New York: Cornell University Press, I966) pp. I8-38 and 0 Strange New World (London: Chatto and Wind us, I965) pp. 33 I et seq.; Daniel Boors tin, The Americans: the National Experience (New York: Random House, 1965) pp. 275- 346. 3· Noah Webster, Dissertations on the English Language, with Notes Historical and Critical (Boston: Isaiah Thomas, I 789) pp. 397-8. See also his Sketches of An American Policy (Hartford, Conn.: Hudson and Goodwin, I 785) p. 47· On the politics of Webster's work see Richard M. Rollins, 'Words as Social Control', AQ_, 28 (I976) pp. 4I5-30. 4· Cooper, letter to Horatio Greenough, 2 I May I83I, quoted Robert E. Spiller, James Fenimore Cooper: Critic of his Time (New York: Russell and Russell, I963) p. viii. Poe, 'Marginalia to Godey's Lady's Book, September I845', Complete Works, XVI, p. 78. 5· O'Sullivan's preface is reprinted in Edwin C. Rozwenc, Ideology and Power in the Age of Jackson (New York University Press, I964) pp. 300-I9. The passage which Poe echoes may be found on pp. 3I7-I8 and seems in turn to be a repetition of De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols, trans. Henry Reeve (I835; rpt. New York: Schocken Books, I96I) n, pp. 65-6. 6. Robert Rantoul Jr., Memoirs, Speeches and Writings of Robert Rantoul Jr., ed. Luther Hamilton (Boston, I854) pp. I84-5, quoted Rush Welter, The Mind of America, IB2o-J86o (New York: Columbia University Press, I975) p. 5· The publishing situation is fully discussed in Chapter 2 below. 154 Notes and References 7. The most thorough commentary on political and social beliefs in the period is Rush Welter, Th£ Mind ifAmerica, I82o-186o (New York: Columbia University Press, I 97 5); Marvin Meyers, Th£ Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Beliif (I 95 7; rpt. Stanford University Press, 1976) is still of great value. Cf. Michael A. Lebowitz, 'The Jacksonians: Paradox Lost?' in Barton J. Bernstein (ed.), Towards a .New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York: Random House, 1968) pp. 65-89; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Th£ Age if Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953); Glyndon Van Deusen, Th£ Jacksonian Era (London: Hamilton, 1959). The classic study of attitudes to the Indians is Roy Harvey Pearce's Savagism and Civili;:ation: A Study if th£ Indian and th£ American Mind ( 1953; rpt. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967). More chilling, however, is Albert K. Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study if .Nationalist Expansionism in American History (1935; rpt. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1963). Michael Paul Rogin, Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and th£ Subjugation if the American Indian (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, I 97 5) offers a stimulating psychohistory of Jacksonian attitudes. 8. Welter, pp. 61--6. Ironically, as the nation was being represented as an asylum for the oppressed it was rapidly constructing asylums in which to incarcerate its own misfits. See David]. Rothman, The Discovery if th£ A.rylum: Social Order and Disorder in the .New Republic (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). The irony is exploited by Hawthorne in 'The Custom-House' and Chapter One of Th£ Scarlet Letter in references to the dialectic of freedom and incarceration which critics like to take back to the Puritan experience at the expense of its contemporary political relevance. The theme of imprisonment runs from Th£ Pioneers through Poe to 'Bartle by'. On the pre-visioning of the United States as an asylum see Marcus Lee Hansen, Th£ Atlantic Migration: A History if th£ Continuing Settlement if the United States, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (New York: Harper and Row, 1961) pp. 146-}1. 9· The paradox of an already achieved perfection being postulated in the same breath as a growth towards even greater perfection, is characteristic of the period. SeeR. W. B. Lewis, Th£ American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the .Nineteenth Century (Chicago university Press, I 955) p. 5n. Cooper's .Notions if th£ Americans seemed to a British contemporary the complete expression of this belief: 'According to [Cooper's] dicta, [the Americans] are a people not only "Adorned with every virtue under heaven," but without vice, fault, blot or blemish. According to his .Notions, they are not only as perfect as it is possible for human nature to be already, but they are becoming every day more perfect. .. .'Literary Gazette, 12 (June 1828), quoted G. Dekker and J. P. McWilliams, Fenimore Cooper: Th£ Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) p. 151. By 1847 Cooper had changed tack: describing the Crater, he produced this fine specimen of Whig thought: 'The policy adopted by the government of the colony was very much unlike that resorted to in America, in connection with the extension of the settlements. Here a vast extent of surface is loosely over-run, rendering the progress of civilization rapid, but very imperfect. Were the people of the United States confined to one half the territory they now occupy, there can be little question that they would be happier, more powerful, more civilized and less rude in manners and feelings, although it may be high treason to insinuate that they are not all, men, women and children, already the ne plus ultra of each of these attainments.' Th£ Crater, Notes and References 155 Mohawk Edition, p. 398. When Melville was not trying to conform to conventional pieties, as he was in White Jru:ket, he too could be acid about American perfection: 'the grand error of your nation, sovereign kings! seems this: the conceit that Mardi is now in the last scene of the last act of her drama; and that all preceding events were ordained to bring about the catastrophe you believe to be at hand, -a universal and permanent republic.' Mardi, Writings, III, P· 238. IO. Of the more distinguished, one might mention Loren Baritz, City upon a Hill: A History of Ideas and Myths in America (New York: John Wiley, I964); Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, I978) and The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, I975); Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, I975); Charles L. Sandford, The Questfor Paradise: Europe and the American Moral Imagination (Urbana: University of Illinois, I96I); Cecilia Tichi, .New World, .New Earth: Environmental Riform in American Literature from the Puritans through Whitman (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, I979). I 1. See Paul W. Gates, The Farmer's Age: Agriculture IBI5-186o (New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, I962) pp.