Reading Questions and Background

Monday 2/10/97

Location: [Reed College] [Department of English] [Laura Arnold][ Nation and Narration]Daily Readings

The Culture of American Landscape

1. Readings:

Hawthorne, "The Great Stone Face," "My Visit to Niagara" (reader)
Dona Brown, "The Uses of Scenery" (Inventing New England 41-74)
Art about Niagara Falls and Landscape

2. In "Self-Reliance," Emerson disparages travel, particularly to Europe, by insisting that "it is want of self-culture that the superstition of Traveling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans" (108). Why were Americans obsessed with going on tours during this era? How did America ever replace these "idols" as a respectable place to travel? Please read Dona Brown's "Uses of Scenery" (on reserve) to get a background in American tourism during this era. What might Emerson think of these rather staged responses to Nature?

3. Nathaniel Hawthorne has traditionally (and rightfully) recognized as one of the great writers of the American Renaissance. Born on Independence Day, 1804 in Salem Massachusetts, Hawthorne was a descendants of the Puritans, about which he wrote a number of stories and novels (most famously, The Scarlet Letter.) He attended Bowdoin College and heard poet Henry Longfellow speak at his graduation of the hope that "Our Native Writers" would achieve lasting fame. In 1838 Hawthorne became engaged to Sophia Peabody, the invalid sister of Elizabeth Peabody, an important figure in New England reform and education movements. (Elizabeth Peabody was Alcott's assistant in drawing out knowledge from young New Englanders. Their efforts--and the children's often hilarious responses--are recorded in the 1836 book Conversations with Children on the Gospels.) Hawthorne's investments during the early years of his marriage in Brook Farm (a utopian community) became the source for his novel The Blithedale Romance, which we will be reading later in the semester. In spite of his jealousy over the success of the "damned mob of scribbling women" who he felt gave him "no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash" and his own assurance that "I should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed," Hawthorne became a major literary figure during his day and had at least one important "groupie"--Herman Melville. Hawthorne is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery near Concord (Baym 1014-1018).

4. As you read Hawthorne's travel stories "the Great Stone Face" and "My Visit to Niagara Falls," I would like you to do a distinctly literary reading of the sketches. What do you make of the narrator and the main characters? How does Ernest compare to Emerson's idyllic understanding of childhood? How does the language used by him compare to that of the narrator and other characters? What is the narrator's response to these natural wonders? How does Ernest?

5. The American sublime. How do American responses to scenery compare to responses to European landscapes such as "Mont Blanc"? Compare paintings of Niagara Falls to that the descriptions in Hawthorne's story.

5. What difference does a city make? For mid-nineteenth-century photographs of a tour of New York City click here

Laura.Arnold@Reed.edu