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- Title
Drain, Baby! Drain?: Cultivating Swamps and Citizens in Crèvecoeur's Immigrant Sketches.
- Authors
Bolt, Kellen
- Abstract
The article explores the theme of swamp cultivation in J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's sketches about immigrants who become citizens. It focuses on Crèvecoeur's attitudes toward swamps, highlighting the environmental dimensions of Americanization as immigrant characters learn how to cultivate wetlands in Letters from an American Farmer (1782) and his lesser-studied French works. As the essay argues, Crèvecoeur depicts American civic identities emerging through a dialogic relationship in which humans modify nature as much as nature modifies humans. Particular emphasis is given to the political significance of wetlands, meadow companies, water exhaustion, and beaver habitats in his texts to examine how notions of belonging are structured around attitudes toward swamps in his sketches about becoming an American.
- Subjects
ST. John de Crevecoeur, J. Hector, 1735-1813; LETTERS From an American Farmer (Book : St. John de Crevecoeur); FRENCH American literature; EMIGRATION &; immigration in literature; SWAMPS in literature; REVOLUTIONARY (Literary period); 19TH century (Literary period)
- Publication
Early American Literature, 2018, Vol 53, Issue 2, p343
- ISSN
0012-8163
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1353/eal.2018.0041