T h e P o s t c o l o n i a l a n d Imperial Experience in American Transcendentalism

T h e P o s t c o l o n i a l a n d Imperial Experience in American Transcendentalism

The Postcolonial and Imperial Experience in American Tr a nscenden ta l ism Marek Paryz

THE POSTCOLONIAL AND IMPERIAL EXPERIENCE IN AMERICAN TRANSCENDENTALISM Copyright Marek Paryz, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-33874-6 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-34182-5 ISBN 978-1-137-01218-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137012180 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Paryz, Marek The postcolonial and imperial experience in American transcendentalism / Marek Paryz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Transcendentalism (New England) 2. Postcolonialism in literature. 3. American literature 19th century History and criticism. 4. Philosophy in literature. I. Title. PS217.T7P37 2012 810.9 003 dc23 2011029888 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: January 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In loving memory of my father, Stanisław Paryż (1926 2008)

C o n t e n t s Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Mapping the Field 1 Part I Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Double Figuration 1 Figures of Dependence: Exploring the Postcolonial in Emerson s Selected Texts 25 2 Beyond the Traveler s Testimony: English Traits and the Construction of Postcolonial Counter- Discourse 47 3 Emerson, New England, and the Rhetoric of Expansion 75 Part II Henry David Thoreau: The Imperial Imaginary 4 Thoreau s Imperial Fantasy: Walden versus Robinson Crusoe 99 5 The Politics of the Genre: Exploration and Ethnography in The Maine Woods 123 Part III Walt Whitman: The National Trajectory 6 Postcolonial Whitman: The Poet and the Nation in the 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass 153 7 Passage to (More Than) India: The Poetics and Politics of Whitman s Textualization of the Orient 179

viii Contents Conclusion: Representative Men 205 Notes 211 Bibliography 221 Index 237

A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s In the course of my work on this book, a number of individuals and institutions have offered me support, which I wish to acknowledge. I owe the greatest debt to Professor Agata Preis- Smith, former Chair of the Section of American Literature in the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. She has been my guiding star ever since I came to Warsaw for my graduate studies back in the mid- 1990s. She represents the professional standard I have always striven to live up to. My gratitude for her encouragement, understanding, enthusiasm, and kindness, is simply inexpressible. I had a chance to present several parts of my work- in- progress at the meetings of the Section of American Literature; the discussions that followed were immensely enlightening to me. I thank my colleagues in the Section for their interest in my project. I did the most substantial part of my research during a term as a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I am grateful to the Polish- U.S. Fulbright Commission in Warsaw, and in particular to Director Andrzej Dakowski, for nominating me for this fellowship. I thank Professor Walter Benn Michaels, former Chair of the English Department UIC, for a kind invitation and a warm welcome to the department. During my stay at UIC, I had the privilege and pleasure to work with Professor Robin Grey and Professor Terence Whalen, who generously shared their time and expertise with me. Specifically, I am indebted to Professor Grey for her invaluable last- minute help in collecting the missing bibliography. Professor Lawrence Buell, whom I had the honor to meet at Harvard University, expressed keen interest in my book- in- progress and suggested the ways of streamlining my argument. It goes without saying that Professor Buell s pioneering scholarship on the postcolonial implications of the American Renaissance writing informed my project at every stage of preparation. I thank him for the work without which this book would never have been written. Professor Josie Campbell and Professor John Leo, my great friends at the University of Rhode Island at Kingston, invited me to lecture on a subject

x Acknowledgments related to my project and offered the kind of academic appreciation that is always more than welcome. My other friends and colleagues in the U.S. Dr. Agnieszka Bedingfield in Boston, Professor Holli Levitsky in LA, and Professor Monika Adamczyk- Garbowska, then in Washington, DC invited me to their places, making my American experience as exciting as it only could be. Last but not least, I wish to express my gratitude to Carol Rigmark and Tom Byrnes, residents of Northbrook, IL, for allowing me to use their townhouse during my term at UIC. * * * Several chapters of this book have appeared as articles prior to the present publication. Chapter Two was published in ATQ 20.3 (September 2006); Chapter Four in Mosaics of Words. Essays on the American and Canadian Literary Imagination in Memory of Professor Nancy Burke, ed. Agata Preis- Smith, Ewa Luczak, and Marek Paryz (Warsaw: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, 2006); Chapter Six in Community and Nearness. Readings in English and American Literature and Culture, ed. Ilona Dobosiewicz and Jacek Gutorow (Opole: University of Opole Press, 2007); and Chapter Seven in The Poetics of America. Explorations in the Literature and Culture of the United States, ed. Agata Preis- Smith and Marek Paryz (Warsaw: Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, 2004).