Heartless Immensity: Literature, Culture, and Geography in Antebellum AmericaUniversity of Michigan Press, 2006 M11 20 - 183 pages As the size of the United States more than doubled during the first half of the nineteenth century, a powerful current of anxiety ran alongside the well-documented optimism about national expansion. Heartless Immensity tells the story of how Americans made sense of their country’s constantly fluctuating borders and its annexation of vast new territories. Anne Baker looks at a variety of sources, including letters, speeches, newspaper editorials, schoolbooks, as well as visual and literary works of art. These cultural artifacts suggest that the country’s anxiety was fueled primarily by two concerns: fears about the size of the nation as a threat to democracy, and about the incorporation of nonwhite, non-Protestant regions. These fears had a consistent and influential presence until after the Civil War, functioning as vital catalysts for the explosion of literary creativity known as the “American Renaissance,” including the work of Melville, Thoreau, and Fuller, among others. Building on extensive archival research as well as insights from cultural geographers and theorists of nationhood, Heartless Immensity demonstrates that national expansion had a far more complicated, multifaceted impact on antebellum American culture than has previously been recognized. Baker shows that Americans developed a variety of linguistic strategies for imagining the form of the United States and its position in relation to other geopolitical entities. Comparisons to European empires, biblical allusions, body politic metaphors, and metaphors derived from science all reflected—and often attempted to assuage—fears that the nation was becoming either monstrously large or else misshapen in ways that threatened cherished beliefs and national self-images. Heartless Immensity argues that, in order to understand the nation’s shift from republic to empire and to understand American culture in a global context, it is first necessary to pay close attention to the processes by which the physical entity known as the United States came into being. This impressively thorough study will make a valuable contribution to the fields of American studies and literary studies. Anne Baker is Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina State University. |
Contents
An Empire in Denial | 1 |
Imagining National Form | 16 |
Mapping and Measuring with Ahab and Wilkes | 30 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
Heartless Immensity: Literature, Culture, and Geography in Antebellum America Anne Baker Limited preview - 2006 |
Heartless Immensity: Literature, Culture, and Geography in Antebellum America Anne Baker Limited preview - 2010 |
Heartless Immensity: Literature, Culture, and Geography in Antebellum America Anne Baker Limited preview - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
Ahab Ahab's American Geography annexation of Texas antebellum argues Arsacides artist Beecher Boston boundaries Buffon California century chapter declared describes Emerson Empire encounter episode European example expansion experience Exploring Expedition figure Flask Fremont gaze geographical space geography books Henry Henry David Thoreau Herman Melville History human imagination imperial incorporated Indian inhabitants Ishmael island Jedidiah Morse John journey Lakes land landscape Library of America literary Manifest Destiny mapping Margaret Fuller measurement Melville Melville's metaphor Mexican Mexico Mississippi Moby-Dick Morse narrative national form nationalist natives nature nineteenth nineteenth-century Northwest Ordinance novel painting panorama pamphlets pond popular portrayed prairie race racial readers rhetoric Rivers role Rowson schoolbooks sense story suggests survey territory Theodore Sedgwick Thoreau tion Tommo U.S. Exploring Expedition United Universal Geography University Press viewers vision Walden Walden Pond West western whale Wilkes Wilkes expedition Wilkes's William Woodbridge writes York