The Literary Presence of Atlantic Colonialism as Notation and Counterpoint

Abstract

In Culture and Imperialism (1993), Edward Said demonstrates how many of the classical literary texts of Europe wrestle with the historical realities of colonialism and imperialism. The two analytical tropes he uses for discussing this ‘ornate absence’ (Morrison) of empire in the European novels of the nineteenth and twentieth century - the concepts of “geographical notation” and “counterpoint” - are both taken from the analysis of music. This essay seeks to adapt Said’s analytical figures to the analysis of nineteenth century American literature’s disarticulation of the nation’s residual involvement in the slave-based Atlantic economy and the links between America’s colonial (Atlantic) and imperial (continental, Pacific) activities. It argues that the geographical and meteorological notations of American texts differ from those of British novels because of the general foregrounding of spatial aspects in the early literature of the United States. Due to the vast and inherently diverse nature of American territorial engagement in the years before the Civil War (both at land and sea), American literature’s historical and geographical notations can at times be seen to include strategies of topographical displacement which endow it with an almost ‘contrapuntal’ quality.