1831: Year of Eclipse Essay

On February 12, 1831, a full prevail of the sun darkened Americas skies. refreshedspapers nationwide heralded its arrival, and commentators congratulated themselves that the idle fears and gloomy forebodingsthe past superstitions attached to such eventshad been replaced by pleasing admiration of the wonders of nature and societys come break through in scientific understanding. However, says Masur (Rites of Execution), prof of invoice at the City University of crude York, what unfolded in 1831 belies this chauvinistic claim of Americas advancement. Rather, he builds a case that Americas future faced inevitable excitement directly linked to the failure of the founders to resolve twain fundamental conflicts the contradiction between a uncouth founded on the inalienable rights of man bosom the cruelty and inhumanity of thrall, and the tension between a federal giving medication intent on preserving the Union and the states claims of uncontestable sovereignty.Masur draws upo n an exceptionally rich array of voices, quoting munificently from figures as divergent as slave rebellion leader Nat Turner, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Andrew Jackson. Masur vividly chronicles the plight of the Cherokee, who despite their willingness to cooperate with the U.S. government, were forced from their homeland and marched wolfram on the infamous Trail of Tears. Tocqueville traveled to the U.S. in 1831, prompting him to economize Democracy in America, and as Masur n anes, Tocquevilles prescient observations illuminated not only the intractable problems of slavery and race in America only when also the extraordinary uniqueness and energy of Americas citizens. Masurs accessible and intriguing play, which appeals to a wide and diverse audience evoke in American history, raises the category 1831, not necessarily one that stands out in most Americans minds, above insignificance.Passing in and out of regard Although hotshot- division studies fell out of favor amid the social-history boom of the 1970s and 1980s, they contribute a place in history circles. Among Mr. Masurs favorite histories, and a work that influenced his own, is The Year of Decision 1846, a study published in 1943 by the historian Bernard DeVoto, who went on to win the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in his world. A huge better(p) seller in its beat, the volume is now seldom read or studied even by professional historians.Now and then, other historians hand made similar forays, usually concentrating on a year attach by war, bloodshed, or governmental upheaval, like Kenneth Milton Stampps America in 1857 A Nation on the Brink. Lately, though, such experiments seem to be favourableand the more obscure the year, the better. Hence titles like American Nervousness, 1903 An Anecdotal History, by Tom Lutz, a study of the physical and psychological illnesses that plagued elite Americans at the turn of the century. Or 1910 The Emancipation of Disson ance, by Thomas Harrison, a number at how and why harmony came to be replaced by dissonance in painting, music, and other art forms.Weve shifted a office from causal and exemplary history, back toward epochal history, which constructs microcosms and tells you what the whole universe is like from the standpoint of one year, or in some cases, one grand age, says Douglas Mitchell, the veteran humanities editor in chief at the University of Chicago Press.Part of the reason is historians renewed interest in narratives as a way to create synthesis. A single year is a manageable way to narrow the scope, deal in specifics, yet tacit work with a demoralisening, middle, and end. An annualized history is a way to bridge the chess opening between conventional narratives, which tend to be driven by political events, and newer histories, which have no clear linear narrative, says Alan Brinkley, a prof of history at Columbia University. Focusing on a year allows one to combine a narrative of sorts with explorations of many beas of life as real by newer histories.Mr. Masurs book, as well as John E. Wills jr.s upcoming 1688 A Global History, are colorfully written and confide on dramatic scene-setting. (1688 even does without footnotes.) Though bound by time, they barf widely across place, focusing on what happens when people travel and furbish up contact, and how similar ideas can echo in very different settings.Historians have long called for some kind of creative synthesis, but the problem has been how to be the voices of elites and workers, men and women, Indians and slaves, celebrators and detractors, and weave them together in a coherent story, says Mr. Masur. quite of tal queen mole rat yet again about whether to use narrative techniques in writing history, scholars will show how its done at a reading slam at this months American historical Association conference. There Mr. Masur will read from his new book.Digging compact into a Single Year If nothing el se, digging deep into a single year can lead to nifty juxtapositions. The portentous eclipse that gives Mr. Masur his title turned up in Nat Turners confession, New England sermons, and newspaper editorials opposed to the reelection of President Andrew Jackson. In 1688, as the English pitch William Dampier was sending vivid descriptions home about the miserablest people in the valetAustralian aboriginestwo Jesuit missionaries joined a thousand Chinese cavalrymen on a sophisticated expedition to survey northern China.For a realism historian, looking at a year like 1688 is a way to avoid Eurocentrism while still capturing the flow of people and commodities, contends Mr. Wills, a professor of history at the University of Southern California. The making of the modern world is the result of worldwide processes in which the Europeans are not the only dynamical originators, he says.Of course, Mr. Wills admits in his introduction that many of the people he describes wouldnt have known t he year as 1688 at all, given their varied calendars. Even so, signs of the basic shifts that created our own very different world are there The rise of science the growth of cities and commerce government policies to further economic growth an immense variety of writing and publishing, some of it for long urban audiences some very individual and idiosyncratic acceptances and reinterpretations of the great religions protests against slavery and the subordination of women.This is all part of one world in a strong, simultaneous sense, the professor says.Text and Context English professors, too, have been bitten by the one-year bug.While historians try to write with more literary flair, belles-lettres scholars have returned to history, doing archival research to devote novels and poems in political and ethnical context. Yet many scholars believe that move has gone too remote literary productions simply gets reduced to historical evidence, and the particular qualities of certain literary genres get lost in the shuffle.Studying a single year helps to keep both text and context in focus, says Michael North, a professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles. Its a way of compromising between the demands of history and the demands of structure, says Mr. North, the author of Reading 1922 A father to the Scene of the Modern.There is an element of trying to define a zeitgeist, adds marshall brown, a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Washington, and the editor of Modern Language Quarterly. Methodologically its a kind of gamble, a provocation to do interdisciplinary work.Often such writing projects begin as classroom experiments. James Chandler, a professor of English address and literature at the University of Chicago, found that his graduate courses in Romantic numbers tended to be clustered around works published in two years, 1789 and 1819. Yet 1819 stood out for the remarkable poetry produced in a singl e year. Over time, Mr. Chandler decided to concentrate on that year, teaching the leading poets on board historical novels and political texts big in their day. The result is England in 1819 The governing of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism, an ambitious volume that Mr. Brown calls the most-cited recent book in the field.1819 is well known to Romanticists as the year that Shelley and Keats wrote much of their greatest poetry. But thats not all. Byron began his most important poem, Don Juan, Coleridge delivered a series of philosophical lectures, and Hazlitt published two volumes of essays. wherefore so much good stuff? According to Mr. Chandler, writers for the first time were self-consciously speaking to and about their historical moment. 1819 was an extremely volatile year, label by the Peterloo Massacre that nearly toppled the English government, leading to restrictions in liberty of the press and the right to assemble. People training for other work bega n to put words to paper.People of extraordinary talent were drawn to the literary field because so much could happen there, says Mr. Chandler, whose book takes its title from a pro-radical Shelley praise of the same name. The idea that you could sum up the spirit of the age in a single year, instead of, say, by citing the reign of a king or queen, was new to England. You didnt have year-end reviews in the fourteenth century. You didnt really have them in the early 18th century, the professor explains.By building the Romantic canon around poets, scholars have tended to treat the historical novels that were popular at the time. Mr. Chandler gives them their due, featuring a chapter on Walter Scotts Ivanhoe and The Bride of Lammermoor. You do cultural history in this period and you realize that the entire country was obsessed with Scott, says Mr. Chandler.For modernism, 1922 was the year to remember. James Joyce published Ulysses that year, and T. S. Eliot The Waste Land. The world o f literature was never the same. The world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts, wrote Willa Cather, who found her own brand of realism falling out of favor in the wake of the self-consciousness of high modernism.Works CitedMasur, Louis P., 1831 Year of Eclipse. knoll & Wang, 2001