The Adventurous Muse: The Poetics of American Fiction, 1789-1900 by William C. Spengemann (review)

116Reviews Spengemann, William C. The Adventurous Muse: The Poetics of American Fiction, 1789-1900. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1977. 290 pp. Cloth: $15.00. William C. Spengemann's The Adventurous Muse: The Poetics ofAmerican Fiction, 1789-1900 is the most provocative general study of American fiction since Leslie Fiedler's Love and Death in the American Novel (1960). Spengemann argues that the discovery of America in the fifteenth century imparted to American fiction in die nineteenth century an aesthetic which, in its purest form, pictured the central character in American fiction as a discoverer of the self-creating value of experience and die author, in his celebration of that discovery, as a proponent of art as the highest form of truth-seeking. This is no small claim, and Spengemann tackles his task with great vigor, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. The first half of The Adventurous Muse deals with lesser known works (both nonfiction and fiction) that are built around die New World travel motif (Columbus' letters home, Bradford's Plymouth Plantation, Sarah Kemble Knight's Journal, Timotiiy Dwight's Travels in New England and New York, Irving'sA Tour on the Prairies, Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, Rowson's Charlotte Temple, Brackenridge's Modem Chivalry, Brown's Arthur Mervyn, Cooper's Deerslayer, and at length, in Chapter 3, Royall Tyler's Algerine Captive and Poe's The Narrative ofArthur Gordon Pym) . Some of these works, Spengemann argues, resist the imaginative implications of psychological journeying and constitute an American "poetics of domesticity," though nowhere as pervasive and enfeebling as the domesticity of British novelists such as Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. AU show American writers distinctively pushing against traditional cultural measurements of truth and toward the solipsism of individual experiential evaluation. These discussions are uniformly impressive; sociological as well as literary in scope, they make a persuasive case for an American alteration of the meaning of travel in Western thinking. Unfortunately, the second half of the book—on Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James—is noticeably weaker than the first half and does not persuade this reader of the importance of Spengemann's travel-narrative aesthetic to the classics of American fiction. The Adventurous Muse leaves one with two very ironic impressions. First, the heart of die book is Spengemann's close reading of fictional texts, yet he turns out to be a more convincing cultural historian (Chapters 1-2) than a reader of fiction. Second, Spengemann is least convincing in his reading of major texts; he often fails to respect the experience of admirable characters like Hester Prynne, Ishmael, and Huck Finn because they are not ultimately free of "domestic" limitations of guilt, humility, and low self-esteem. Such a lack of respect for the private psychology of fictional characters also leads Spengemann to the very dubious conclusions that Reuben Bourne's shocking murder of his own son, Tommo 's subconscious revulsion from life on Typee, and Hank Morgan's Armageddon are artistic capitulations by Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain to domestic limitations on their imaginations. Only when he finds a character like Lambert Strether, who, in his physical journey is metaphorically expressing a broadening of his creator's aesthetic vision, is Spengemann persuasive. He is so wedded to the concepts of physical travel and successful journeys that he cannot appreciate the extent to which defeated characters like Hester and Huck are, no less than Lambert Strether, affirmations of mental freedom within the context of their respective societies, and, as such, reflections of Hawthorne's and Twain's acute sense of art as a liberating force. By thus limiting his appreciation of "adventurous" characters to successful self-creating alter egos for the artists themselves, Spengemann in his own way insists upon heroes and heroines who provide novels with happy endings. Studies in American Fiction117 To be fair, there are moments in TheAventurous Muse, particularly his discussion of Captain Vere, when Spengemann seems to realize that true adventurousness wiU usually be subsumed in a domestic context. But, more often than not, Spengemann cannot conceive of aesthetic liberation in the artist without die allegorical assistance of a specific character's physical journey away from social restraints. The Adventurous Muse finally tells us more...