Visionary Compacts

by Donald E. Pease

In a major contribution to American literary culture, Donald E. Pease reassesses the works of a number of major writers of the American Renaissance, including Hawthorne, Whitman, Emerson, Melville, and Poe. He argues that the Revolutionary mythos, used to explain and organize American Renaissance literature for a century, was not used as an organizing principle by these writers. Pease succeeds in showing that the literature of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s addressed specific concerns about the fate of the nation under the political challenges of abolition and secession, the tensions between nationality and locality, and the threat of a civil war they sought to prevent.

During this period, Pease demonstrates, the writers of the American Renaissance did not adhere to the Revolutionary mythos but devised what he calls visionary compacts. Such compacts sanctioned terms of agreement from the nation’s past—by the founding principles of liberty, equality, and social justice—capable of bringing together the nation’s citizens. In returning Americans to a vision of agreed upon principles, says Pease, they hoped to restore a common life that all Americans could share, and thereby avoid the need for a civil war.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Donald E. Pease is the Ted and Helen Geisel Third Century Professor in the Humanities, Chair of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College. He is an Americanist, literary and cultural critic, and academic. Pease directs the annual Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth.

Pease is an authority on 19th- and 20th-century American literature and literary theory and the founder and director of the Futures of American Studies Institute. Besides writing numerous books, Pease has written over 100 articles on figures in American and British literature and is the editor of The New Americanist series.

Reviews

[Andrew Sydlik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the chapter “Melville and Cultural Persuasion.” While I found it intriguing, I was not as “persuaded” by the force of Pease’s interpretations of either Melville or American literature of the time, which are a bit reductionist to me, as many later literary critics seem to be. Pease makes the rhetoric of Ahab and Ishmael to be reflective of certain social and political forces at the time. Unfortunately, this is the common trope of literary criticism today. While this approach can provide insight, it usually does not do justice to the text, relying on a selective and narrow analysis of the text, and more on examination of history and other works of socio-political critique.

This book, at least this chapter, is a good example of this. Pease refers often to The American Jeremiad. In a way, this chapter is more of an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of The American Jeremiad, and its interpretation of Melville, than it is of Moby Dick. Still, Pease is obviously a thoughtful scholar. Here are a few thoughts on both the good and the bad of points that I found particularly engaging:

- Pease is one of the few critics to talk meaningfully about Ahab’s loss of his leg by Moby Dick. While he only scratches the surface, he at least sees the event as shaping Ahab’s beliefs and rhetoric, without seeing Melville’s depiction as simply a way of vilifying a disabled character (like some have proposed for Richard III). Pease does a little bit in rehabilitating Ahab from the more common portrait of him as a tyrant and villain, although at the end he still claims that Melville used Ahab as a condemnation of the self-interest of politicians.
- For Moby Dick scholarship, this chapter is most noted for his formulation of the World War II and Cold War appropriation of Ishmael as the symbol of freedom and individualism against totalitarianism, represented by Ahab. This is where he is most astute. He also points out the contradictions between the ideas laid out in F.O. Matthiessen’s American Renaissance, one of the most significant books on American literature of the mid to late 19th century, which has pretty much shaped criticism of American literature of that time ever since. Pease rightly points out the contradictions of Matthiessen’s glorification of the “self-reliant man,” Emerson’s highest ideal, supposedly present in the best writing of the era. He also discusses the curious dissonance between this and Matthiessen’s personal disaffection with American hubris and imperial tendencies.
- Where I find most fault with Pease is analysis of Ishmael. While I agree that Ishmael cannot be reduced to a symbol of freedom or self-reliance, he goes too far the other way, seeing his confusion and despair as a condemnation of the worst qualities of the transcendentalists, too resistant to either see any hope of change or to take responsibility for the consequences of their own actions (or lack thereof). In this, he claims that Ishmael depends on Ahab and the high-flung rhetoric to justify his own inaction and choice. This is a novel interpretation, and I see some value in examining the interdependence of the two. However, I do not believe either character is so clear-cut, and reducible to a critique of or reaction to social forces of the time.

Pease claims that Ishmael doesn’t participate with rest of crew, and engages in flights of fancy as willful as Ahab’s revenge, with no cohesive philosophy; he moves from observation to observation distractedly, only interested in self-expression. Some readers undoubtedly agree, unable to grasp the rhyme and reason to the various digressions. For those such as Pease, however, who are serious scholars of the text, this seems to me to be a willful ignorance of Ishmael’s bonds with the crew, especially Queequeg. It also ignores the philosophical musings, which to me represent to me some semblance of a cohesive, if loosely bound, system, that does in fact rely on social interdependence; Ishmael says we are all cracked about the head, and sadly in need of mending. His kinship with those considered outcasts, the overcoming of his own prejudice when meeting Queequeg, and his brash praise of the ways of kindly foreigners and pagans over hypocritical Americans and Christians, all run against Pease’s interpretation of Ishmael.

William Spanos’ The Errant Art of Moby Dick relies heavily on this work, praising its brilliance while also providing a closer look at Ishmael, and the ways in which he represents a more cohesive figure of social critique. Spanos’ own work is also a bit reductionist for me—associating everything with a social/political bent—and also dense and high-handed at times. However, it provides a closer and more comprehensive reading of Moby Dick (even if you have to wade through a lot of quotations from Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida to get to it).

Overall, this is an interesting chapter in what I imagine to be an important book in literary criticism. At some point, I hope to look at the rest of the book, but I anticipate finding the same flaws (or at least, limitations) there as well.