Feminine American Myth-Making

During our class discussion on The Female American (10/12/10), Dr. Logan asked us if American myth-making can ever be independent of colonization, decimation, and eradication.  My answer was an emphatic “no.”  Despite the blood-free colonization that Unca Eliza Winkfield enacts upon the natives of the island, she still decimates their religious way of life, destroying their sun idol and converting them to Christianity.  Even the idealized female utopia portrayed in The Female American involves colonization, decimation, and eradication.  

What does occur, in American literature, is the pretense of emptiness, an imaginary lack of native people already occupying the Americas.  This, of course, is one of the strategies of American myth-making – pretend that the land was un-occupied when in reality it was occupied by a large amount of Native peoples.  Reality (historical fact) vs. fantasy (what authors wrote) in American literature is incredibly fascinating and requires careful reading to know when you’re being duped by the author.  Another strategy is religious justification.  Edward J. Gallagher has a digital archive dedicated to the literature of justification, aptly titled The Literature of Justification.

Imagine my surprise when I found an example of (feminine) American myth-making by Hannah Griffitts in MMMB, signed with her pen name Fidelia.  And by feminine, I mean written by a woman.  The entry is “The Review of past & present Times in Pennsylvania.  June 1776,” MMMB # 91 (not available in the GoogleBooks preview).  

Rather than retype the entire entry, I’m going to post small sections that I belief best represent American myth-making.

Inside Joke

“It’s a POLITICAL text!” – Dr. Logan

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Thank you to Elizabeth, Stephen’s wife, and Elizabeth’s sister, for making such a delicious cake for our class.  And no, you can never have too much frosting!

You can read about The Coquette; or, the History of Eliza Wharton by Hannah Webster Foster on Wikipedia, and download the text for free on Project Gutenberg.

Talk Nerdy To Me

I enjoy reading literary theory, but sometimes, the jargon is just too much.  If it takes me ten minutes to read a few sentences because I have to “unpack” (a Dr. Anna Jones term) every other word, I one, get annoyed and two, become extremely frustrated.  That being said, I love the terminology of literary theory.  I get a thrill out of hearing these words spoken, or just reading them on the page.  Sometimes, when I hear the same term repeated over and over again, or I write it over and over again, it doesn’t even seem like a real word.  This happened the other day with book, it was very surreal.  Here are a few of my favorites, in no particular order.  (Please note: not all the terms are strictly literary theory terms, but since this is my blog, I can do whatever I want).

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Do you ever picture the authors of these terms saying the word?  Or maybe someone you like?  Can you see their lips forming the word, hear their voice tripping or gliding over the constants and vowels?  Does it make you giddy?  Do you get goose bumps or the shivers?  Do you get the giggles?  Does it thrill you?  Does it make you blush?  Am I weird for suggesting such bodily responses?  Probably, but hearing these words, in certain circumstances, cause me to react in unexpected ways.  And I’m betting I’m not the only one.


And if you think my fascination with jargon is limited to literary theory terms only, you’re sadly mistaken.  I recently re-read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and it is filled with an abundance of military jargon, which I fell in love with.  The scenes with Mat Cauthon were my favorite because he’s the general of the Red Hand (Shen an Calhar).  Not only that, he has the memories of hundreds of men stuffed into his head, all of whom were involved in the military, so his vocabulary is quite expansive.  I also recently re-watched Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galatica, and my love affair with military jargon was rekindled: KAG, bring in the cat, Viper jocks, Raptors, Cylon Raiders, mutiny, insurrection, civvies, FTL (faster than light), ambush, and action stations, action stations, this is not a drill, set condition one throughout the ship.     

What are some of your favorite jargon terms, literary or other?


[Word cloud created on the Wordle site.]