The Provincialism of Time

Abstract

In his introduction to The Reinterpretation of Literature (1928), Norman Foerster cautions against a of that he considers far more insidious than that provincialism of place from which criticism suffered in last century (xiii). Defining term as the measure of past by ideas and moods of a narrow present (xiii), he could just as well have used it to issue a warning to critics about presentist hubris we display when we forget Ecclesiastan wisdom: that there is nothing new under sun. It is a critical imperative--or so it seems--to underscore our breaks with past, to be, as it were, unprecedented. Ralph Waldo Emerson enjoined his generation to enjoy an original relation to universe (Emerson 7), and Ezra Pound issued his modernist mandate in three words: Make it new! While I would not argue that critical imperative to newness is uniquely American, United States certainly has a history of such declarations. Accustomed to a narrative of linear progress, I am thus humbled every time an occasion, such as an anniversary of a journal, prompts me to look back at some of founding moments of my chosen field of study. I am of course reminded of changes in critical terms, practices, and assumptions: Foerster would scarcely recognize field he pioneered. But I am also surprised by what has persisted: recurrent themes and debates about what constitutes American literature, about how and why it should be studied and taught, and about relationship of field to a crisis in humanities. The self-conscious declarations of independence in manifestos of a new field throw into relief both changes in and persistence of endeavor we continue--perhaps (still) tentatively--to label study of American literature. I offer this meditation on two such founding moments against provincialism of time. THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE The first conference of early scholars took place in Palmer House of Modern Language Association (MLA) convention in Chicago in 1965, against backdrop of rising social unrest. The year 1966 witnessed formation of Literature Section of MLA out of Literature Group (ALG), which had been founded in 1921, in response to relative absence of field at annual meetings of MLA and in pages of its journal, Publications of Modern Language Association. While idea of an American literature is inevitably bound up with national politics, these founding moments attest to jaggedness of connections between national and institutional politics. The manifestos on study of (including founding editorial statements), moreover, show how debates about field concerned nature of literary study more broadly, and they attest as much to persistence as to progress. The idea of an American literature, expressed as a wish, followed closely on emergence of nation. Noah Webster was not alone in recognizing role of cultural forms in defining an identity for nascent political entity. Calling for an America ... as independent in as she is in politics, as famous for arts as for arms, he sought at once to declare cultural independence from England and to unify a diverse group of people that had already formed themselves into discrete entities. Similar struggles are evident throughout first half of nineteenth century, as self-proclaimed literary nationalists founded journals and published anthologies and literary histories designed to promote expression of a national culture in arts and letters. Universities sporadically offered classes in from early nineteenth century, but they appeared more consistently in last decades of century, when, as Michael Warner documents, study of was just beginning to professionalize. …