TY - JOUR
AU - McCurdy, John, G.
AB - For young men of the early nineteenth century, the interior region of North America was a crucible of self and nation. In The American Elsewhere Jimmy L. Bryan Jr. examines the motivations and imaginations of this “reckless generation” who ventured west “in search of emotional experiences and personal transformation” (p. 2). Through a study of writings by and about such adventurers, Bryan reveals a cohort of Americans who pushed both themselves and U.S. borders west. Bryan paints a group portrait through an expansive investigation of multiple biographies. Beginning in the 1810s, young men such as the Massachusetts minister Timothy Flint and Francis Parkman Jr. were captivated by romanticism. Reacting against the strictures of the market revolution, they imagined the frontier as a liberating destination. Upon crossing into the somewhat-amorphous “elsewhere,” the men transformed their appearance, subjected themselves to deprivations, and came into contact with diverse cultures. Yet the true transformation was internal. Freed from the domesticity of eastern manliness, they explored their emotions as they grew to know companions intimately and trembled in awe at the wilderness. The frontier also allowed for erotic exploits with Mexican women and even with other men. The wave of adventurers crested with the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), when exploration became conquest and the men abandoned their freedom to become soldiers and entrepreneurs. In parallel with the stories of the men, Bryan explores the literature of the American elsewhere, which he terms “adventurelogue”: “stories of toil and privation, the setting of multicultural frontiers, and the intent both to inform and to entertain” (p. 81). Telling tales around the campfire was critical to a man's frontier transformation, and these stories invited embellishment. In time, the taller tales filtered east where they became heroic novels for mass consumption. Bored as a minister, Flint drew inspiration from his missionary work along the Ohio River to craft Francis Berrian (1826), a two-volume novel about an adventurer who abandoned his Harvard University training to barter with Comanches and rescue the daughter of a Mexican governor. Artists such as George Catlin added a visual component to the book through evocative images of Native Americans and the wilderness. Ultimately, adventurelogue became a narrative of the nation that confirmed the American ideal as a man of democratic individualism and that helped justify U.S. imperialism and the displacement of indigenous peoples. Bryan's account of adventurers and adventurelogue is filled with inviting tales and is solidly grounded in the scholarship of history, literary analysis, and anthropology. His work tends toward prosopography, although Bryan thoughtfully details outliers to highlight the diversity of adventurers. He also advances the history of manhood in the nineteenth century, expanding on the work of E. Anthony Rotundo and others to explain the imagined and actual freedom of adventurers. The young man who ventured west and told his story justified his emotional outbursts and licentious behavior by contrasting himself to “the materialist city dweller” (p. 124). Although the adventurers ultimately returned east or died in the West, perhaps outgrowing their boyish impulses, the novels of Washington Irving and Parkman's histories left an indelible mark on American literature. © The Author 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - The American Elsewhere: Adventure and Manliness in the Age of Expansion
JO - The Journal of American History
DO - 10.1093/jahist/jaz204
DA - 2019-06-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-american-elsewhere-adventure-and-manliness-in-the-age-of-expansion-ZB6qutFxnA
SP - 166
VL - 106
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -