American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent

In exploring the origins and characterof the American liberal tradition, MyraJehlen begins with the proposition thatthe decisive factor that shaped the European settlers' idea of "America" or the"American" was material rather than conceptual--it was the physical fact of theland. European settlers came to a continent on which they had no history, bringing the ideology of liberal individualism, which they projected onto the land itself. They believed the continent proclaimedthat individuals were born in natureand freely made their own society. Aninsurgent ideology in Europe, this ideaworked in America paradoxically toempower the individual and to restrictsocial change.

Jehlen sketches the evolution of theconcept of incarnation through comparisons of American and European eighteenth-century naturalist writings, particularly Emerson's Nature. She then explores the way incarnation functions ideologically--to both enable and curtail action--in the writing of fiction. Her examination of Hawthorne and Melville shows how the myth of the New World both licensed and limited American writers who set out to create their ownworlds in fiction. She examines conflicts between the exigencies of narrative form and the imperatives of ideology in the writings of Franklin, Jefferson, Emerson, and others. Jehlen concludes with a speculation on the implication of this original construction of "America" for the United States today, when such imperial concepts have been called into question.