Vertiginous Pull of Negative Rhetoric: The American “No! In Thunder”

Semrau, Janusz

doi:10.2478/v10121-010-0020-7

Abstract

The paper presents a sample historical-literary survey of a specific popular idea of the gist of ‘Americanness’ in the guise of condensed observations in broad cultural circulation. This is to provoke the question about the degree to which this kind of discourse may reflect the so-called habits of the heart (de Tocqueville [1835-1840] 1966: 264), as against how at a certain point it may explode - to borrow from Paul de Man (1979: 10) - into “vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration”.1

References

Alcott, Louisa May 2000 The portable Louisa May Alcott. (Edited by Elizabeth Lennox Keyser.) New York: Penguin Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Allen, Walter 1964 The modern novel in Britain and the United States. New York: E.P. Dutton.
Search in Google Scholar
Anderson, Quentin 1976 “Practical and visionary Americans”, American Scholar 45/3: 405-418.
Search in Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan 1991 The office of The scarlet letter. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1993 The rites of assent: Transformations in the symbolic construction of America. New York: Routledge.
Search in Google Scholar
Booth, Wayne C. 1974 Modern dogma and the rhetoric of assent. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Bradbury, Malcolm 1961 “The Beats: A very exclusive club”, in: Alfred Kazin (ed.), 319-323.
Search in Google Scholar
Brooks, Gwendolyn 2006 The essential Gwendolyn Brooks. (Edited by Elizabeth Alexander.) New York: The Library of America. 2006a “‘do not be afraid of no’”, in: Gwendolyn Brooks (2006), 34.
Search in Google Scholar
Cisneros, Sandra 1984 The house on Mango Street. Houston, TX: Arte Publico Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Commager, Henry Steele 1959 The American mind: An interpretation of American thought and character sincethe 1880’s. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Davidson, Cathy N. 2004 “No! in thunder”, American Literature 76/4: 665-675. 10.1215/00029831-76-4-665
Search in Google Scholar
de Man, Paul 1979 Allegories of reading: Figural language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
de Tocqueville, Alexis 1966 Democracy in America. (Edited by J. P. Mayer and Max Lerner, translated by George Lawrence.) New York: Harper & Row.
Search in Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles 2000 American notes for general circulation. (Edited by Patricia Ingham.) New York: Penguin Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Duncan, Isadora 1996 My life. New York: W.W. Norton.
Search in Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 1950 The selected writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Edited by Brooks Atkinson.) New York: The Modern Library. 1950a “Thoreau”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1950, 893-914. 1983 Essays and lectures. (Edited by Joel Porte.) New York: The Library of America. 1983a “Self-reliance”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983), 257-282. 1983b “Politics”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983), 559-571.
Search in Google Scholar
Fiedler A. Leslie 1972 No! in thunder: Essays on myth and literature. New York: Stein & Day.
Search in Google Scholar
Fluck, Winfried 2009 “American literary history and the romance with America”, American Literary History 21/1: 1-18.10.1093/alh/ajn060
Search in Google Scholar
Franzen, Jonathan 2003 How to be alone: Essays. New York: Picador.
Search in Google Scholar
Fuller Ossoli, Margaret 1852 Memoir. Vol. II. London: Richard Bentley.
Search in Google Scholar
Galehouse, Maggie 1999 “‘New World woman’: Toni Morrison’s Sula”, Papers on Language and Literature 35/4: 339-362.
Search in Google Scholar
Harding, Walter 1959 A Thoreau handbook. New York: New York University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Hassan, Ihab 1961 Radical innocence: Studies in the contemporary American novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Hawthorne, Nathaniel 1983 Novels. (Edited by Millicent Bell.) New York: The Library of America. 1983a The scarlet letter, in: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1983), 115-345.
Search in Google Scholar
Heller, Dana 1995 Family plots: The de-Oedipalization of popular culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.10.9783/9781512816808
Search in Google Scholar
Hume, Kathryn 2000 American dream, American nightmare: Fiction since 1960. Urbana - Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Search in Google Scholar
James, Henry 1986 Daisy Miller. (Edited by Geoffrey Moore.) New York: Penguin Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas 1984 Writings. (Edited by Merrill D. Peterson.) New York: The Library of America. 1984a “Rebellion, secession, and diplomacy”, in: Thomas Jefferson (1984), 881-887.
Search in Google Scholar
Karl, Fredick R. 1983 American fictions 1940/1980. New York: Harper & Row.
Search in Google Scholar
Kazin, Alfred (ed.). 1961 The open form: Essays for our time. New York - Burlingame: Harcourt, Brace & World.
Search in Google Scholar
Kemp, Jana 2005 No! How one simple word can transform your life. New York: AMACOM.
Search in Google Scholar
Lawrence, D. H. 1965 Studies in classic American literature. London: Mercury.
Search in Google Scholar
Lindley, Susan Hill 1996 “You have stept out of your place”: A history of women and religion in America.
Search in Google Scholar
Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Lippmann, Walter 1914 Drift and mastery: An attempt to diagnose the current unrest. New York: Mitchell Kennerly.
Search in Google Scholar
MacDonald, J. Fred 1987 Who shot the sheriff? New York: Praeger.
Search in Google Scholar
May, Henry F. 1983 Ideas, faiths, and feelings: Essays on American intellectual and religious history1952-1982. New York: Oxford University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
McDougal, Walter A. 2004 Freedom just around the corner: A new American history, 1585-1828. New York: HarperCollins.
Search in Google Scholar
Melville, Herman 1993 Correspondence. (Edited by Lynn Horth.) Evanston - Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library.10.1093/oseo/instance.00217264
Search in Google Scholar
Mencken, H. L. 1980 The American language: An inquiry into the development of English in the UnitedStates. (4th edition) New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Search in Google Scholar
Miers, Earl Schenck 1956 The American story: The age of exploration to the age of atom. Great Neck, NY: Channel Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Miller, James E., Jr. (ed.) 1991 Heritage of American literature. (With the assistance of Kathleen Farley.) Vol. I. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Search in Google Scholar
Miller, John C. 1959 Origins of the American Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Moore, Geoffrey 1986 “Introduction”, in: Henry James (1986), 7-38.
Search in Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir [1955] 1997 Lolita. New York: Vintage International.
Search in Google Scholar
Paine, Thomas 1991 “The author’s profession of faith”, in: James E. Miller, Jr. (ed.), 565-566.
Search in Google Scholar
Parrington, Vernon Louis 1930 Main currents in American thought: An interpretation of American literature from thebeginnings to 1920. 3 Vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Search in Google Scholar
Pearlman, Mickey (ed.) 1989 American women writing fiction. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. 1989a “Introduction”, in: Mickey Pearlman (1989), 1-8.
Search in Google Scholar
Pease, Donald E. 1987 Visionary compacts: American Renaissance writings in cultural context. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.10.1349/ddlp.1918
Search in Google Scholar
Poirier, Richard 1966 A world elsewhere: The place of style in American literature. London: Oxford University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Russell, Sharman Apt. 2001 Kill the cowboy: A battle of mythology in the new West. (2nd edition) New York: Bison Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Semrau, Janusz 2011a “Dubious American license: The first in flight”, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 46/4: 97-105. 2011b Transcribing the territory; or, rethinking resistance. A study in classic Americanfiction. (2nd revised and enlarged edition) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.10.2478/v10121-010-0013-6
Search in Google Scholar
Simon, David R. 2002 Tony Soprano’s America: The criminal side of the American Dream. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Henry Nash 1965 “Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, in: Wallace Stegner (ed.), 61-72.
Search in Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David 1975 The selected works of Thoreau. (Edited by Henry Seidel Canaby, revised by Walter Harding.) Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1975a Walden, in: Henry David Thoreau (1975), 245-465.
Search in Google Scholar
Trollope, Frances 1997 Domestic manners of the Americans. (Edited by Pamela Neville-Sington.) Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Whitman, Walt 1982 Complete poetry and collected prose. (Edited by Justin Kaplan.) New York: The Library of America. 1982a “Song of myself”, in: Walt Whitman (1982), 188-247. 1982b “Song of the open road”, in: Walt Whitman (1982), 297-307. 1982c “Transpositions”, in: Walt Whitman (1982), 551.
Search in Google Scholar

Vertiginous Pull of Negative Rhetoric: The American “No! In Thunder”

Abstract

Paradigm

My account