Literature in New England

Only a portion of Taylor's literary labor is recorded here; he was an indefatigable worker, and his health broke down under the steady strain. In 1878, he was appointed minister to Germany; and it seemed peculiarly appropriate that the translator of Germany's great classic should be thus honored. His appointment was universally approved, for the poet was widely respected and, in the circle of his literary associates, greatly beloved. He was welcomed at Berlin, as Irving had been at the court of Spain; but his diplomatic career was pathetically brief. Death came upon him suddenly as he sat in his library at the German capital in December of the year of his appointment.

2.7.1 Novelists and humorists

Writers of fiction were numerous during the first half of the century, in the South as well as in the North. While Cooper and Poe were the only ones who attained eminence in this field, there was no lack of story-telling, and in several instances a wide local reputation was built upon the success of a single book. The influence of Cooper is strongly felt in the work of three Southern novelists, Kennedy, Bird, and Simms, of whom the last-named deserves a wider fame. John P. Kennedy (1795-1870), a native of Baltimore and a successful lawyer who represented his state in Congress and was also Secretary of the Navy under President Fillmore, is chiefly remembered as the author of Horse-Shoe Robinson (1835), his best work; a capital romance of the Revolution in the South. The Indian novel, Nick of the Woods (1837), constitutes the principal claim of Dr. Robert M. Bird (1803-1854) to recognition in this group. He was, however, the author of several romances dealing with the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, and also of two or three plays, among which The Gladiator holds the principal place.

W.G. Simms, 1806-1870.

William Gilmore Simms is, next to Poe, the most representative and most talented among the writers of the South previous to the Civil War. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina. As his family belonged to the poorer class, he received little in the way of formal education, but exhibited unusual energy in literary pursuits. At twenty-three, Simms had already published three volumes of youthful verse. His first novel, Martin Faber (1833), reflects the influence of Charles Brockden Browne; but Guy Rivers (1834) was the first of a series of border romances in which the influence of Cooper is plainly seen. In 1835, Simms published The Partisan, one of his best stories, a vivid and entertaining narrative of the partisan warfare conducted in the South during the Revolutionary struggle. In Mellichampe (1836), The Kinsmen (1841), and Katharine Walton (1851), he continued the story of the characters thus introduced. His historical tales were as numerous as those of Cooper, and continued to appear down to the period of the Civil War. Although defective in technical construction and by no means comparable to Cooper's best novels, they nevertheless constitute a remarkable collection and are not unworthy the attention of the modern reader. A voluminous writer, Simms was the author of biographies, plays, and poems, in addition to the long list of romances, only the most important of which have been named.

A follower of Simms was John Esten Cooke (1830-1886), whose novels, The Virginia Comedians (1854), and Fairfax (1868), are representative of this author's work in the same historical field.

Fiction in the North.

Rev. William Ware (1797-1852), a Massachusetts clergyman, was the author of three sober narratives dealing with the persecution of the Christians at Rome. To some extent Zenobia (1837), Aurelian (1838), and Julian (1841) still maintain their place among popular religious romances. Rev. Sylvester Judd (1813-1853) is more dimly remembered as the author of a transcendental romance, Margaret (1845), which was admired by Lowell for its description of humble rural life. The fiction of adventure is represented at its best in the novels of Herman Melville (1819-1891), a native of New York City. His own experiences on land and sea supplied the material of his most successful books, Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), and Moby Dick, or the White Whale (1851). This last, a masterpiece, is one of the greatest sea stories ever written, a real epic. The tales of Catherine M. Sedgwick (1789-1867) employed an historical background; of these Hope Leslie, or Early Times in Massachusetts (1827), and The Linwoods, or Sixty Years Since in America (1835), were especially admired. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), whose philanthropic spirit brought her prominently into the anti-slavery agitation, began her modest literary career with the publication of two historical novels: Hobomok (1824), which depicted life in the colony at Salem, and The Rebels (1825), the scene of which is laid in Boston just previous to the Revolution.

2.7.2 Poetry, South and North

Among the minor poets whose songs have found recognition and whose names deserve some record in the history of our literature, the following at least should be included. William W. Story (1819-1895), the friend of Hawthorne and Lowell, was born in Salem. He resided for the larger part of his life in Italy, and attained considerable rank as a sculptor. He was a poet of more than ordinary gifts, and an author of several volumes, prose as well as verse, including the well-known Roba di Roma, or Walks and Talks about Rome (1862). Thomas William Parsons (1819-1892), born at Boston, is more widely known as a translator of Dante than as an original poet, although his lines On a Bust of Dante are greatly admired by scholars. Dr. Parsons, who was a dental surgeon, practiced his profession abroad, and it was during his residence in Italy that his interest in the Italian poet was aroused. His translation ranks with the best American renderings of the Commedia, although it is not complete. His version of the Inferno appeared in 1867; portions of the Purgatorio and Paradiso were published in 1893. Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892), an artist living in Cambridge, a member of the transcendental group, published a translation of Virgil's AEneid in 1872. The modest verse of Alice and Phoebe Cary (Alice, 1820-71; Phoebe, 1824-71), natives of Ohio, serious in sentiment, was widely read.

New England Women.

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910), a lecturer and leader in reform movements, will be remembered chiefly as the author of a great warpoem, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), a worker in the mills at Lowell when her early songs attracted the notice of Whittier, and Mrs. Celia Laighton Thaxter (1836-1894), daughter of the lighthouse-keeper on the Isles of Shoals, were also typical New Englanders who found their inspiration in subjects close at hand. Of other New England women whose verse was notable for literary quality and popular appeal, the following should be mentioned: Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford (1835-1921), Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton (1835-1908), Mrs. Julia C. R. Dorr (1825-1913), born in South Carolina, but making her home in Vermont, Mrs. Annie A. Fields (1834-1915), the wife of James T. Fields, and Edna Dean Proctor (1838- ). A larger distinction attends the literary career of Mrs. Helen Fiske Jackson (1831-1885), before her second marriage Helen Hunt, whose signature "H. H." was familiar to the readers of a generation ago. Mrs. jackson was born at Amherst, Massachusetts. Her poems, issued in 1870, placed her at the head of the women writers of verse in America. The last ten years of Mrs. Jackson's life were spent in Colorado and California. Her interest in the Indians and her intense sympathy with them in their wrongs led to the publication of her Century of Dishonor (1881), a book which bore fruit in the official appointment of Mrs. Jackson as special examiner to the mission Indians in California; and eventually in her striking novel, Ramona (1884). A group of rather remarkable short stories by "Saxe Holm," published in two series (1873, 1878), although unacknowledged, are usually attributed to Helen Hunt Jackson. The poems of Emily Dickinson (1830- 1886) are remarkable productions, which have commanded recognition by our highest literary critics. Miss Dickinson was a townswoman of Helen Fiske, and her life was spent at Amherst largely in seclusion. Only a few intimate friends were aware of her poetical gift, and her verses were not published until 1890, four years after her death.

The Middle West.

John Hay (1838-1905), distinguished as a diplomatist and statesman, was born in Indiana. He began the practice of law in Illinois in 1861, and became the private secretary of President Lincoln. In collaboration with John G. Nicolay he afterward wrote the authoritativeAbraham Lincoln; a History (1886-1890). His literary fame, however, is based upon a slender volume of Pike County Ballads (1871) which, strong in local color, portray the rough virtues of the Mississippi Valley in the early days. There is a finer quality of elegance and grace -- with less originality -- in the later verse of his Castilian Days (1871) and Poems (1890). A strong and successful novel, The Breadwinners (1884), attributed to John Hay, was never publicly acknowledged.

2.7.3 Scholars and essayists

In the field of literary criticism the work of Edwin Percy Whipple (1819-1886) was notable. He was the author of several volumes of scholarly essays including Literature and Life (1849), Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1869), and American Literature, and Other Papers (1887). Horace E. Scudder (1838- 1902), long associated with the publication of the Atlantic Monthly, -- he succeeded Aldrich as its editor in 1890, -- was an indefatigable writer, the extent of whose service to American letters is hardly understood, since much of his work was anonymous. Henry N. Hudson (1814-1886), Richard Grant White (1821- 1885), William James Rolfe (1827-1910), and Horace Howard Furness (1833-1912) are to be remembered for their services in the criticism and interpretation of Shakespeare's dramas. Their scholarly editions of the plays are among the best that have been produced. The name of William Winter (1836-1917), author of Shakespeare's England (1886) and our foremost critic of the stage, may be mentioned in this connection. Personal Literary Recollections appeared in 1909.

Reminiscences.

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), the distinguished Boston clergyman and philanthropist, long survived the generation which read his earlier works. His literary career was remarkably versatile and productive. A New England Boyhood (1893) and Memories of a Hundred Years (1902) are pleasant sketch-books of past experience. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1902) and James Russell Lowell and his Friends (1899) are further contributions to this interesting series of reminiscent essays. Dr. Hale's work in fiction has been referred to earlier. ¹ Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), one of the Cambridge group, is the author of two volumes of reminiscence, Cheerful Yesterdays (1898) and Contemporaries (1899), which are of especial interest to literary students. He is also the biographer of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1884), Longfellow (1903), and Whittier (1903). Yesterdays with Authors (1872), a volume written by James T. Fields (1817-1881), should be mentioned here. Mr. Fields, a partner in the famous publishing house of Ticknor and Fields, has a recognized standing among the men of letters. He followed Lowell as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and was well known in his day as a lecturer and an essayist.

Nature Books.

John Burroughs (1837-1921) is, after Thoreau, our foremost writer on nature themes. He is not only a lover of the woods and fields, but he is a conscientious student of plant and animal life. He has no sympathy and scant patience with writers on these subjects whose imagination has interfered with their accuracy; he describes honestly what he observes. Wake-Robin (1871), Winter Sunshine (1875), Birds and Poets (1877), Locusts and Wild Honey (1879), Fresh Fields (1884), Signs and Seasons (1886), Ways of Nature (1905) -- these are some of his outdoor books; he has written also Literary Values (1904), a volume of critical essays, two books on Walt Whitman, and Bird and Bough (1906), a volume of poems. Harriet Mann Miller ("Olive Thorne Miller") (1831-1918) and Bradford Torrey (1843-1912) have written entertainingly of the ways and habits of birds; while Ernest Thompson Seton (born in England, 1860) has narrated with a somewhat freer imagination the biographies of various wild animals he has known.

American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. There was no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and tribal cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived. As a result, Native American oral literature is quite diverse. Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting cultures like the Navajo are different from stories of settled agricultural tribes such as the pueblo-dwelling Acoma; the stories of northern lakeside dwellers such as the Ojibwa often differ radically from stories of desert tribes like the Hopi.

Tribes maintained their own religions -- worshipping gods, animals, plants, or sacred persons. Systems of government ranged from democracies to councils of elders to theocracies. These tribal variations enter into the oral literature as well.

Still, it is possible to make a few generalizations. Indian stories, for example, glow with reverence for nature as a spiritual as well as physical mother. Nature is alive and endowed with spiritual forces; main characters may be animals or plants, often totems associated with a tribe, group, or individual. The closest to the Indian sense of holiness in later American literature is Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendental "Over-Soul," which pervades all of life.

The Mexican tribes revered the divine Quetzalcoatl, a god of the Toltecs and Aztecs, and some tales of a high god or culture were told elsewhere. However, there are no long, standardized religious cycles about one supreme divinity. The closest equivalents to Old World spiritual narratives are often accounts of shamans initiations and voyages. Apart from these, there are stories about culture heroes such as the Ojibwa tribe's Manabozho or the Navajo tribe's Coyote. These tricksters are treated with varying degrees of respect. In one tale they may act like heroes, while in another they may seem selfish or foolish. Although past authorities, such as the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, have deprecated trickster tales as expressing the inferior, amoral side of the psyche, contemporary scholars -- some of them Native Americans -- point out that Odysseus and Prometheus, the revered Greek heroes, are essentially tricksters as well.

Examples of almost every oral genre can be found in American Indian literature: lyrics, chants, myths, fairy tales, humorous anecdotes, incantations, riddles, proverbs, epics, and legendary histories. Accounts of migrations and ancestors abound, as do vision or healing songs and tricksters' tales. Certain creation stories are particularly popular. In one well-known creation story, told with variations among many tribes, a turtle holds up the world. In a Cheyenne version, the creator, Maheo, has four chances to fashion the world from a watery universe. He sends four water birds diving to try to bring up earth from the bottom. The snow goose, loon, and mallard soar high into the sky and sweep down in a dive, but cannot reach bottom; but the little coot, who cannot fly, succeeds in bringing up some mud in his bill. Only one creature, humble Grandmother Turtle, is the right shape to support the mud world Maheo shapes on her shell -- hence the Indian name for America, "Turtle Island."

The songs or poetry, like the narratives, range from the sacred to the light and humorous: There are lullabies, war chants, love songs, and special songs for children's games, gambling, various chores, magic, or dance ceremonials. Generally the songs are repetitive. Short poem-songs given in dreams sometimes have the clear imagery and subtle mood associated with Japanese haiku or Eastern-influenced imagistic poetry. A Chippewa song runs:

A loon I thought it was

But it was

My love's

splashing oar.

Vision songs, often very short, are another distinctive form. Appearing in dreams or visions, sometimes with no warning, they may be healing, hunting, or love songs.

Indian oral tradition and its relation to American literature as a whole is one of the richest and least explored topics in American studies. The Indian contribution to America is greater than is often believed. The hundreds of Indian words in everyday American English include "canoe," "tobacco," "potato," "moccasin," "moose," "persimmon," "raccoon," "tomahawk," and "totem." Contemporary Native American writing, discussed in chapter 8, also contains works of great beauty.

Had history taken a different turn, the United States easily could have been a part of the great Spanish or French overseas empires. Its present inhabitants might speak Spanish and form one nation with Mexico, or speak French and be joined with Canadian Francophone Quebec and Montreal.

Yet the earliest explorers of America were not English, Spanish, or French. The first European record of exploration in America is in a Scandinavian language. The Old Norse Vinland Saga recounts how the adventurous Leif Eriksson and a band of wandering Norsemen settled briefly somewhere on the northeast coast of America -- probably Nova Scotia, in Canada -- in the first decade of the 11th century, almost 400 years before the next recorded European discovery of the New World.

III. Conclusion

The first known and sustained contact between the Americas and the rest of the world, however, began with the famous voyage of an Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, funded by the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella. Columbus's journal in his "Epistola," printed in 1493, recounts the trip's drama -- the terror of the men, who feared monsters and thought they might fall off the edge of the world; the near-mutiny; how Columbus faked the ships' logs so the men would not know how much farther they had travelled than anyone had gone before; and the first sighting of land as they neared America.

Bartolomй de las Casas is the richest source of information about the early contact between American Indians and Europeans. As a young priest he helped conquer Cuba. He transcribed Columbus's journal, and late in life wrote a long, vivid History of the Indians criticizing their enslavement by the Spanish.

Initial English attempts at colonization were disasters. The first colony was set up in 1585 at Roanoke, off the coast of North Carolina; all its colonists disappeared, and to this day legends are told about blue-eyed Croatan Indians of the area. The second colony was more permanent: Jamestown, established in 1607. It endured starvation, brutality, and misrule. However, the literature of the period paints America in glowing colors as the land of riches and opportunity. Accounts of the colonizations became world-renowned. The exploration of Roanoke was carefully recorded by Thomas Hariot in A Briefe and True Report of the New-Found Land of Virginia (1588). Hariot's book was quickly translated into Latin, French, and German; the text and pictures were made into engravings and widely republished for over 200 years.

The Jamestown colony's main record, the writings of Captain John Smith, one of its leaders, is the exact opposite of Hariot's accurate, scientific account. Smith was an incurable romantic, and he seems to have embroidered his adventures. To him we owe the famous story of the Indian maiden, Pocahontas. Whether fact or fiction, the tale is ingrained in the American historical imagination. The story recounts how Pocahontas, favorite daughter of Chief Powhatan, saved Captain Smith's life when he was a prisoner of the chief. Later, when the English persuaded Powhatan to give Pocahontas to them as a hostage, her gentleness, intelligence, and beauty impressed the English, and, in 1614, she married John Rolfe, an English gentleman. The marriage initiated an eight-year peace between the colonists and the Indians, ensuring the survival of the struggling new colony.

In the 17th century, pirates, adventurers, and explorers opened the way to a second wave of permanent colonists, bringing their wives, children, farm implements, and craftsmen's tools. The early literature of exploration, made up of diaries, letters, travel journals, ships' logs, and reports to the explorers' financial backers -- European rulers or, in mercantile England and Holland, joint stock companies -- gradually was supplanted by records of the settled colonies. Because England eventually took possession of the North American colonies, the best-known and most-anthologized colonial literature is English. As American minority literature continues to flower in the 20th century and American life becomes increasingly multicultural, scholars are rediscovering the importance of the continent's mixed ethnic heritage. Although the story of literature now turns to the English accounts, it is important to recognize its richly cosmopolitan beginnings.

It is likely that no other colonists in the history of the world were as intellectual as the Puritans. Between 1630 and 1690, there were as many university graduates in the northeastern section of the United States, known as New England, as in the mother country -- an astounding fact when one considers that most educated people of the time were aristocrats who were unwilling to risk their lives in wilderness conditions. The self-made and often self-educated Puritans were notable exceptions. They wanted education to understand and execute God's will as they established their colonies throughout New England.

The Puritan definition of good writing was that which brought home a full awareness of the importance of worshipping God and of the spiritual dangers that the soul faced on Earth. Puritan style varied enormously -- from complex metaphysical poetry to homely journals and crushingly pedantic religious history. Whatever the style or genre, certain themes remained constant. Life was seen as a test; failure led to eternal damnation and hellfire, and success to heavenly bliss. This world was an arena of constant battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan, a formidable enemy with many disguises. Many Puritans excitedly awaited the "millennium," when Jesus would return to Earth, end human misery, and inaugurate 1,000 years of peace and prosperity.

Scholars have long pointed out the link between Puritanism and capitalism: Both rest on ambition, hard work, and an intense striving for success. Although individual Puritans could not know, in strict theological terms, whether they were "saved" and among the elect who would go to heaven, Puritans tended to feel that earthly success was a sign of election. Wealth and status were sought not only for themselves, but as welcome reassurances of spiritual health and promises of eternal life.

Moreover, the concept of stewardship encouraged success. The Puritans interpreted all things and events as symbols with deeper spiritual meanings, and felt that in advancing their own profit and their community's well-being, they were also furthering God's plans. They did not draw lines of distinction between the secular and religious spheres: All of life was an expression of the divine will -- a belief that later resurfaces in Transcendentalism.

In recording ordinary events to reveal their spiritual meaning, Puritan authors commonly cited the Bible, chapter and verse. History was a symbolic religious panorama leading to the Puritan triumph over the New World and to God's kingdom on Earth.

The first Puritan colonists who settled New England exemplified the seriousness of Reformation Christianity. Known as the "Pilgrims," they were a small group of believers who had migrated from England to Holland -- even then known for its religious tolerance -- in 1608, during a time of persecutions.

Like most Puritans, they interpreted the Bible literally. They read and acted on the text of the Second Book of Corinthians -- "Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord." Despairing of purifying the Church of England from within, "Separatists" formed underground "covenanted" churches that swore loyalty to the group instead of the king. Seen as traitors to the king as well as heretics damned to hell, they were often persecuted. Their separation took them ultimately to the New World.

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