Between Habits of the Heart and Copulation of Clichés: Some Popular American Stories, Mores and Shibboleths

Semrau, Janusz

doi:10.2478/v10121-012-0006-8

Abstract

From the very beginning, all manner of ideas, concepts and conceits have been advanced to explain America and Americans - as much to themselves as to others. The paper presents a historical- literary compilation of popular notions of ‘Americanness’ in the guise of random de Tocquevillian observations in general circulation. This is to provoke the question about the degree to which this kind of pervasive discourse may reflect the so-called habits of the heart, as against how at a certain point it may lapse into a Nabokovian copulation of clichés.

References

Adams, Henry 1918 The education of Henry Adams: An autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.10.5479/sil.12378.39088001174630
Search in Google Scholar
Anderson, Quentin 1972 The imperial self: An essay in American literary and cultural history. New York: Vintage.
Search in Google Scholar
Arvin, Newton 1962 “Individualism and the American writer”, in: Morton Dauwen Zabel (ed.), 544-549.
Search in Google Scholar
Asselineau, Roger 1980 The transcendentalist constant in American literature. New York: New York University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Auster, Paul. 1990 The New York trilogy. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 1990a Ghosts, in: Paul Auster 1990, 159-232. 2010 Sunset Park. New York: Henry Holt.
Search in Google Scholar
Bell, Michael Davitt 1980 The development of American romance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Sacvan 2002 “Deadpan Huck, or, what’s funny about interpretation”, The Kenyon Review 24/3-4: 90-134.
Search in Google Scholar
Bewley, Marius 1963 The eccentric design: Form in the classic American novel. New York: Columbia University Press.10.7312/bewl93362
Search in Google Scholar
Block, James E. 2002 A nation of agents: The American path to a modern self and society. Cambridge, MA: The Balknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Boorstin, Daniel J. 1965 The Americans: The national experience. New York: Vintage.
Search in Google Scholar
Bourne, Randolph Silliman 1992 The radical will: Selected writings, 1911-1918. (Edited by Olaf Hansen.) Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Bradford, William 1991 Of Plymouth Plantation, in: James E. Miller, Jr. (ed.), 50-83.
Search in Google Scholar
Bradshaw, Michael John 1988 Regions and regionalism in the United States. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi.10.1007/978-1-349-19045-4
Search in Google Scholar
Brown, Gillian 1990 Domestic individualism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Browne, Ray B. - Marshall W. Fishwick - Kevin O. Browne (eds.) 1990 Dominant symbols in popular culture. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Burroughs, John 1882 “Henry D. Thoreau”, The Century Magazine XXIV/3: 368-379.
Search in Google Scholar
Cahir, Linda Costanzo 1999 Society and solitude in the works of Herman Melville and Edith Wharton. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Coontz, Stephanie 1992 The way we never were. New York: Basic Books. 1997 The way we really are. New York: Basic Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Cooper, James Fenimore 1964 The pioneers. New York: The New American Library. 1984 The prairie. Laurel, NY: Lightyear Press. 2001 Notions of the Americans. (Edited by Bradley J. Birzer and John Willson.) Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing.
Search in Google Scholar
Day, Dorothy 1997 The long loneliness. New York: HarperSanFrancisco.
Search in Google Scholar
de Creveceour, St. John, J. Hector 1981 Letters from an American farmer; Sketches of eighteenth-century America. (Edited by Albert E. Stone.) New York: Penguin Books.
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
DeLillo, Don 1989 Americana. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles [n.d.] The life and adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons. 2000 American notes for general circulation. (Edited by Patricia Ingham.) New York: Penguin Books.
Search in Google Scholar
Dickinson, Emily 1960 The complete poems of Emily Dickinson. (Edited by Thomas H. Johnson.) Boston: Little, Brown.
Search in Google Scholar
Ehrlich, Gretel 1985 The solace of open spaces. New York: Viking Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Ellison, Ralph 1972 Invisible man. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Search in Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 1965 The journals and miscellaneous notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. V, 1835-1838. (Edited by M. M. Sealts, Jr.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 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 “Experience”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1983, 469-492. 1983c “Politics”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1983, 559-571. 1983d “First visit to England”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1983, 767-778. 1983e “Considerations by the way”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1983, 1077-1096. 1983f “Worship”, in: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1983, 1053-1076.
Search in Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, F. Scott 1965 The crack-up: With other uncollected pieces, note-books, and unpublished letters. (Edited by Edmund Wilson.) New York: New Directions.
Search in Google Scholar
FitzGerald, Frances 1972 Fire in the lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam. Boston: Little, Brown.
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
Franklin, Benjamin 1987 Writings. (Edited by J. A. Leo Lemay.) New York: The Library of America. 1987a “Information to those who would remove to America”, in: Benjamin Franklin 1987, 975- 983. 1987b “The rattle-snake as a symbol of America”, in: Benjamin Franklin 1987, 744-746.
Search in Google Scholar
Franzen, Jonathan 2003 How to be alone: Essays. New York: Picador.
Search in Google Scholar
Frost, Robert 1967 Complete poems of Robert Frost. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1967a “The lesson for today”, in: Robert Frost 1967, 471-476.
Search in Google Scholar
Fuller Ossoli, Margaret 1869 Woman in the nineteenth century, and kindred papers. (Edited by Arthur B. Fuller.) New York: The Tribune Association.
Search in Google Scholar
Gass, William H. 1968 In the heart of the heart of the country. New York: Harper & Row.
Search in Google Scholar
Hale, Edward Everett 1863 “The man without a country”, The Atlantic Monthly XII/74: 665-680.
Search in Google Scholar
Harrison, Burton 1898 “Good Americans”, The Century LV/3: 330-339.10.1248/yakushi1881.1898.194_330
Search in Google Scholar
Hawthorne, Julian 1884 Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife. Boston: James R. Osgood.
Search in Google Scholar
Hawthorne, Nathaniel 1982 Tales and sketches. (Edited by Harvey Pearce.) New York: The Library of America. 1982a “Preface to Mosses from an old Manse”, in: Nathaniel Hawthorne 1982, 1123-1149. 1983 Novels. (Edited by Millicent Bell.) New York: The Library of America. 1983a The scarlet letter, in: Nathaniel Hawthorne 1983, 115-345. 1983b The Blithedale romance, in: Nathaniel Hawthorne 1983, 629-848.
Search in Google Scholar
Hemingway, Ernest 1993 The first forty-nine stories. London: Arrow Books. 1993a “The battler”, in: Hemingway 1993, 123-132.
Search in Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver Wendell 1872 The professor at the breakfast-table. Boston: James R. Osgood.
Search in Google Scholar
Howe, Irving 1986 The American newness: Culture and politics in the age of Emerson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.10.4159/harvard.9780674182707
Search in Google Scholar
James, Henry 1955 The notebooks of Henry James. (Edited by F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock.) New York: George Braziller. 1993 Collected travel writings: Great Britain and America. (Edited by Richard Howard.) New York: The Library of America. 1993a “The American scene”, in: Henry James 1993, 351-757.
Search in Google Scholar
Jay, Gregory S. 1997 American literature and the culture wars. Ithaca, NJ: Cornell University Press.10.7591/9781501731273
Search in Google Scholar
Kunstler, James Howard 1993 The geography of nowhere. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1998 Home from nowhere. New York: Touchstone.
Search in Google Scholar
Lapham, Lewis 1995 Hotel America. New York: Verso.
Search in Google Scholar
Ledeen, Michael A. 2000 Tocqueville on American character. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Lentricchia, Frank (ed.) 1991 Introducing Don DeLillo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1991a “The American writer as bad citizen”, in: Frank Lentricchia (ed.), 1-6.
Search in Google Scholar
Levin, Daniel Lessard 1999 Representing popular sovereignty: The constitution in American political culture. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Lewis, R. W. B. 1955 The American Adam: Innocence, tragedy, and tradition in the nineteenth century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Lundberg, Ferdinand 1992 Politicians and other scoundrels. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books.
Search in Google Scholar
MacLeish, Archibald 1962 The collected poems of Archibald MacLeish. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Search in Google Scholar
Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl 2000 Women’s movement: Escape as transgression in North American feminist fiction. Amsterdam - Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.
Search in Google Scholar
Marx, Leo 1967 The machine in the garden: Technology and the pastoral ideal in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
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
McCullers, Carson. 1975 The mortgaged heart. (Edited by Margarita G. Smith.) Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Search in Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall 1980 “Inside on the outside, or the spaced-out American”, The Antigonish Review 76-75: 144-152.
Search in Google Scholar
Melville, Herman 1983 Redburn; White-Jacket; Moby-Dick. (Edited by G. Thomas Tanselle.) New York: The Library of America. 1983a Moby-Dick, in: Herman Melville 1983, 771-1408.
Search in Google Scholar
Meyer, John M. 1986 “Myths of socialization and personality”, in: Thomas C. Heller et al. (eds.), 208- 210.
Search in Google Scholar
Miller, Douglas T. 1970 The birth of modern America 1820-1850. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Search in Google Scholar
Miller, James E., Jr. (ed.) 1991 Heritage of American literature. Vol. I. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Search in Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir 1997 Lolita. New York: Vintage International.
Search in Google Scholar
Newfield, Christopher 1996 The Emerson effect: Individualism and submission in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Nigro, August J. 1984 The diagonal line: Separation and reparation in American literature. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses.
Search in Google Scholar
O’Connor, Brendon 2007a “What is anti-Americanism?”, in: Brendon O’Connor (ed.), 1-22.
Search in Google Scholar
O’Connor, Brendon (ed.) 2007 Anti-Americanism. Oxford: Greenwood World Publishing.
Search in Google Scholar
O’Connor, Flannery 1988 Collected works. (Edited by Sally Fitzgerald.) New York: The Library of America. 1988a Wise blood, in: Flannery O’Connor 1988, 1-131.
Search in Google Scholar
Oliver, Robert T. 1965 History of public speaking in America. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Search in Google Scholar
Olson, Charles 1968 Maximus IV, V, VI. London: Charles Goliard.
Search in Google Scholar
Parsons, George Fredric 1887 “The growth of materialism”, The Atlantic Monthly LX/358: 157-172.
Search in Google Scholar
Patten, Simon Nelson 1909 Product and climax. New York: B.W. Huebsch.
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
Percy, Walker 1971 Love in the ruins. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Search in Google Scholar
Perkins, Emily 1994 “Can’t beat it”, Sport (New Zealand) 12: 79-89.
Search in Google Scholar
Petesch, Donald A. 1989 A spy in the enemy’s country: The emergence of modern black literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Poirier, Richard 1966 A world elsewhere. London: Oxford University Press. [Review] 1850 John Ruskin, The seven lamps of architecture, The New Englander VIII: 418-434.
Search in Google Scholar
Rockland, Michael Aaron 1990 “American mobility”, in: Ray B. Browne et al. (eds.), 59-74.
Search in Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard 1999 Achieving our country: Leftist thought in twentieth-century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Roth, Philip 1973 The great American novel. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Search in Google Scholar
Rowe, Joyce A. 1988 Equivocal endings in classic American novels. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511519369
Search in Google Scholar
Santayana, George 1937 Character and opinion in the United States. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Search in Google Scholar
Sardar, Ziauddin - Merryl Wyn Davies 2004 American terminator. New York: The Disinformation Company.
Search in Google Scholar
Schweitzer, Ivy 2006 Perfecting friendship: Politics and affiliation in early American literature. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Segal, Jerome M. 2003 Graceful simplicity: The philosophy and politics of the alternative American Dream. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Semrau, Janusz 2011 “Dubious American license: The first in flight”, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 46/4: 97-105. 2012a Transcribing the territory; or, rethinking resistance. A study in classic Americanfiction. (2nd ed.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 2012b “Vertiginous pull of negative rhetoric: The American ‘NO! in thunder’”, Studia AnglicaPosnaniensia 47/1: 61-71.10.2478/v10121-010-0020-7
Search in Google Scholar
Stein, Gertrude 1973 The geographical history of America, or the relation of human nature to the humanmind. New York: Vintage. 1998 Writings 1932-1946. (Edited by Catherine R. Stimpson and Harriet Chessman.) New York: The Library of America.
Search in Google Scholar
Steinbeck, John 2002 America and Americans, and selected nonfiction. (Edited by Susan Shillinglaw and Jackson J. Benson.) New York: Viking Penguin.
Search in Google Scholar
Stevens, Wallace 1977 The collected poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1977a “The American sublime”, in: Wallace Stevens 1977, 130-131.
Search in Google Scholar
Swisshelm, Jane Grey 1876 “The American character”, The Galaxy XXII: 618-623.
Search in Google Scholar
Tanner, Tony 1971 City of words: American fiction 1950-1970. New York: Harper & Row.
Search in Google Scholar
Thomson, Hunter S. 1979 The great shark hunt. New York: Summit Book.
Search in Google Scholar
Thoreau, Henry David 1949 The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. 14 vols. (Edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen.) Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 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
Twain, Mark 2001 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. (Edited by Victor Fisher and Lin Salamo.) Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520946316
Search in Google Scholar
Viereck, Peter 1956 The unadjusted man: A new hero for Americans. Boston, MA: The Beacon Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Warren, Joyce W. 1984 The American Narcissus. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
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 the broad-axe”, in: Walt Whitman 1982, 330-341. 1982b “Song of the open road”, in: Walt Whitman 1982, 297-307. 1982c “Democratic vistas”, in: Walt Whitman 1982, 929-994.
Search in Google Scholar
Widmer, Kingsley 1965 The literary rebel. Carbondale - Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Search in Google Scholar
Wilder, Thornton 1979 American characteristics and other essays. (Edited by Donald Gallup.) New York: Harper & Row.
Search in Google Scholar
Wister, Owen 1920 A straight deal; or, the ancient grudge. New York: Macmillan.
Search in Google Scholar
Wolfe, Tom 1968 The electric kool-aid acid test. New York: Bantam.
Search in Google Scholar
Zabel, Morton Dauwen (ed.) 1962 Literary opinion in America. (3rd ed.) New York: Harper & Row.
Search in Google Scholar

Between Habits of the Heart and Copulation of Clichés: Some Popular American Stories, Mores and Shibboleths

Abstract

Paradigm

My account