Ecologies of nation and identity: The idea and experience of place in early nineteenth-century New England literature (Daniel Webster, Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Vaughn Cheney, Theodore Dwight, Jr.).

摘要

Western culture and literature, it is often observed, encourage geographic placelessness, and the tendency toward placelessness seems particularly pronounced in America. This dissertation qualifies these assumptions by revealing the significant role of place and place attachment (or topophilia) in the production and reception of a variety of non-canonical New England literatures of the 1820s and 30s. An exploration of the celebrated public addresses of Daniel Webster at Plymouth and Bunker Hill illustrates how his oratory was shaped by an idea from classical Athenian rhetoric: that the legitimacy and identity of a national people is determined by its sacred bond to a patria or homeland. Through Webster's influence, the link between people and patria became an important tenet of nineteenth-century American nationalism. I show how Webster built on that notion when he evoked topophilia toward places that were associated with the origins of the republic, most notably Plymouth and Bunker Hill, to inspire nationalist fervor in his listeners.; Subsequent chapters reveal that more varied and ambivalent attitudes about the state of the republic emerged from the treatment of place in historical novels and travel literature, forms that were less directly tied to the cultural project of nationalism. Readings of Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok, Harriet Vaughn Cheney's A Peep at the Pilgrims, and the travel essays of Theodore Dwight, Jr. show how the idea of place could be used not only to promote nationalism, but also to critique some of the wrongs associated with it, including racism, sexism, and unchecked environmental destruction. My dissertation confirms that topophilia and the idea of place are minor themes in American literature, which more often exalts space and mobility above place and rootedness. I conclude that topophilia, though it is often a deliberately cultivated and somewhat synthetic sentiment, is also a persistent feature of American culture that is admirable insofar as it inspires social justice and responsible stewardship of the land and its communities.