"Thoreau's Last Words-- and America's
First Literatures" article by Jarold Ramsey in Redefining American Literary
History, Edited by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff & Jerry W. Ward, Jr. The Modern
Language Association, New York, 1990. pp. 52-61.
This essay by well-known literary critic, Jarold Ramsey, supports the ongoing
movement of revising the American literary canon to include silenced or marginalized
voices, such as the American Indian. Ramsey points out that American Indians,
though often portrayed in our national literataure, are the product of the white
man's imagination, not the Indian's. In fact, Ramsey concludes, even Thoreau (and
more so, Hawthorne, we should add), who comes close at times in The Maine
Woods to grasping the "aboriginal experience," lacks "the imagination of
native origins and [is] incapable of speaking or comprehending the first languages
of the land." Nathaniel Hawthorne's treatment--and lack of treatment--of the Native
American in his body of work must be considered when reading this essay.
