Transnationalism and Classic American Literature

Abstract

Taking issue with associations between American literature and identity politics, this essay argues that to remap the culture of the United States in global terms is to problematize its exemplary and exceptionalist qualities and recognize inherent transnational frictions. As an example of this, the writings of Emerson and Thoreau in the 1840s are situated in relation to conflicts over the Oregon Territory, so that their textual designs come to seem less abstract or Neoplatonic than aggressively nationalistic. To restore a sense of the spatial problematic to American literature is to interrogate its more traditional integration within a temporal dimension of prophetic destiny. The essay concludes by suggesting that reexamining American allegories of interiority through pre-Romantic theories of spatial formation effectively produces a different perspective on texts that have become naturalized as examples of liberal self-reliance and institutionalized as types of classic American literature.