From The Millions:
“How tame will his language sound, who would describe Niagara in language fitted for the falls at London bridge, or attempt the majesty of the Mississippi in that which was made for the Thames?”
—North American Review (1815)“In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?”
—Edinburgh Review (1820)Turning from an eastern dusk and towards a western dawn, Benjamin Franklin miraculously saw a rising sun on the horizon after having done some sober demographic calculations in 1751. Not quite yet the aged, paunchy, gouty, balding raconteur of the American Revolution, but rather only the slightly paunchy, slightly gouty, slightly balding raconteur of middle-age, Franklin examined the data concerning the births, immigration, and quality of life in the English colonies by contrast to Great Britain. In his Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Franklin noted that a century hence, and “the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on this Side of the Water” (while also taking time to make a number of patently racist observations about a minority group in Pennsylvania—the Germans). For the scientist and statesman, such magnitude implied inevitable conclusions about empire.
Whereas London and Manchester were fetid, crowded, stinking, chaotic, and over-populated, Philadelphia and Boston were expansive, fresh, and had room to breathe. In Britain land was at a premium, but in America there was the seemingly limitless expanse stretching towards an unimaginable West (which was, of course, already populated by people). In the verdant fecundity of the New World, Franklin imagined (as many other colonists did) that a certain “Merry Old England” that had been supplanted in Europe could once again be resurrected, a land defined by leisure and plenty for the largest number of people.
. . . .
Not yet an American, but still an Englishmen—and the gun smoke of Lexington and Concord still 24 years away—Franklin enthusiastically prophesizes in his pamphlet that “What an Accession of Power to the British Empire by Sea as well as Land!”
A decade later, and he’d write in a 1760 missive to a one Lord Kames that “I have long been of opinion, that the foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British empire lie in America.” And so, with some patriotism as a trueborn Englishmen, Benjamin Franklin could perhaps imagine the Court of St. James transplanted to the environs of the Boston Common, the Houses of Parliament south of Manhattan’s old Dutch Wall Street, the residence of George II of Great Britain moved from Westminster to Philadelphia’s Southwest Square. After all, it was the Anglo-Irish philosopher and poet George Berkeley, writing his lyric “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America” in his Providence, Rhode Island manse, who could gush that “Westward the course of empire takes its way.”
But even if aristocrats could perhaps share Franklin’s ambitions for a British Empire that stretched from the white cliffs of Dover to San Francisco Bay (after all, christened “New Albion” by Francis Drake), the idea of moving the capital to Boston or Philadelphia seemed anathema. Smith explained that it was “asking too much of an Englishmen to look forward with pleasure to the time when London might become a provincial capital taking orders from an imperial metropolis somewhere in the interior of North America.”
. . . .
Why are American and British literature two different things if they’re mostly written in English, and how exactly do we delineate those differences? It can seem arbitrary that the supreme Anglophiles Henry James and T.S. Eliot are (technically) Americans, and their British counterparts W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas can seem so fervently Yankee. Then there is what we do with the early folks; is the “tenth muse,” colonial poet Anne Bradstreet, British because she was born in Northampton, England, or was she American because she died in Ipswich, Mass.?
. . . .
Before he brilliantly complicates that logic, Spengemann sheepishly concludes, “writings in English by Americans belong, by definition, to English literature.”
. . . .
Sometimes misattributed to linguist Noam Chomsky, it was actually the scholar of Yiddish Max Weinreich who quipped that a “language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” If that’s the case, then a national literature is the bit of territory that that army and navy police. But what happens when that language is shared by two separate armies and navies? To what nation does the resultant literature then belong?
Link to the rest at The Millions
“To what nation does the resultant literature then belong?”
Why does this matter? Why should I care? Cannot it belong to all of us (supposing that is that it makes any sense to talk of it belonging to anyone other than the owner of the copyright)?
Pardon me, PG. I have just heard from someone who wants to take issue with the OP’s contention that there are two and only two nationalities of English-language literature. He would appear to be a large, burly Irishman who is familiar with the practice of physical assault.
(The Canadians are too busy waiting for their government subsidies, and the Australians are having too much fun on their own to care what a lot of bloody Yanks and Pommies think. I hear New Zealand is thinking of subscribing 50 cents to the cause, though.)
Good points, Tom, but I suspect most of those quoted in the OP were thinking in terms of The British Empire or the English-speaking members of the British Commonwealth vs. the impudent and ungrateful Americans who excused themselves from the Empire without permission.
Fair enough, but there is a large, burly Irishman, familiar with the practice of physical assault, who wishes to point out that the Irish excused themselves from the Empire without permission, and are not members of the Commonwealth.
Three cheers for the Irish and their unique and undeniable shaping of the English language for the better!
All English-speakers and readers of the English language are blessed by the contribution the Irish have made to our shared language together with its various dialects and modes of expression.
I agree (and for the record, I am not Irish). But it does show up a rather nasty blind spot in the OP, don’t you think?
I normally make it a point to not respond to comments on my articles, but I have to address this since I don’t appreciate being accused of having a “nasty blind spot” on this issue, since the version of my article as replicated here specifically doesn’t include the portion of my article where I wrote about Irish literature.
So for those who think that I’m seemingly unaware of Ireland’s literary legacy here’s the section where I explicitly acknowledge it, as well as making clear that it’s not reducible to “British literature.” : “Some anthologizers who are seemingly unaware that Ireland isn’t Great Britain will even include James Joyce and W.B. Yeats alongside Gerard Manley Hopkins and D.H. Lawrence as somehow transcendentally ‘English.'”
Later on I describe the gambit of including Irish literature as a subset of British literature as being offensive, and in another portion I take pains to acknowledge how Commonwealth literature of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so on complicates my argument. I’m not asking for agreement, but it would be nice if I wasn’t accused of making an argument that I didn’t make. I’m always happy to have new readers, and this seems like an interesting site, but it’s unfortunate that strong opinions result from the article not being read in its entirety – indeed where the exact opposite of my intent is concluded.