and texts of Europe. The inception of the printing
press in the 15th century facilitated the transmis-
sion of Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s icono-
clastic Protestant ideas and encouraged vernacular
translations, sentiments that clashed with Catholi-
cism’s insistence on Latin. Both biblical translations
deemed unacceptable and those propounding them
were subject to destruction via fire, and thus, the
survival of both people and texts were again aligned.
Dynamic both politically and textually, this era saw
Henry VIII’s refutation of papal authority and his
subsequent founding of the Anglican church; Eliza-
beth I’s rise, rule, and promulgation of Protestant-
ism; and the ascension of King James I and creation
of his conservative new Bible. The boundaries of
these disputes, however, were continually expanding,
as the dictums of the early modern age insisted that
to be prosperous at home meant being prosperous
abroad, and that meant the maintaining of colonial
empires.
As the struggle of the dominant ideologies in
Europe quickly spilled over into its ever-expanding
imperial holdings abroad, different views on survival
presented themselves. John Milton’s paradise
Lost applied the Christian mythos as a means of
examining survival in new worlds—Eden for Adam
and Eve, and Hell for Lucifer. Jonathan Swift’s
GuLLiver’s traveLs explored the notion that, sail
where one may, survival—however one chooses to
define it—is only ultimately possible through self-
knowledge. Tales pouring back to Europe from the
Western Hemisphere, including those of Cabeza de
Vaca and John Smith, told harrowing tales of sur-
vival amid unfamiliar new environments. Captivity
narratives such as Mary Rowlandson’s narrative
oF the captivity and restoration oF Mary row-
Landson, further underscored the dangers incum-
bent upon usurpation-based foreign settlement.
The attendant horrors of “progress” helped, over
the course of time, to spawn the romantic move-
ment. Writers such as William Wordsworth
(see “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tin-
tern Abbey”), John Keats, and Sir Walter Scott
sought survival in and pined for a departed day that
favored bucolic simplicity in tried locales over the
ever-advancing technology utilized to conquer alien
landscapes, cultures, and people.
But neither colonial exploitation nor its atten-
dant cultural emphases would survive in the New
World. Shortly after gaining independence, the
United States produced its own literary examina-
tions of just what it meant to survive. Early Ameri-
can writers—not merely those reproducing British
fiction, but those with whom others identified the
young country—such as James Fenimore Cooper,
Washington Irving (see sketchbook oF GeoF-
F rey crayon, the), and Michel-Guillaume-Jean
de Crèvecoeur deductively chronicled the survival
of the state by examining parcels thereof: ostensibly,
the small villages and hamlets ranging across the
frontier and the manner in which they were con-
figured, governed, and threatened. From a spiritual
perspective, Calvinist notions of predestination,
which seem to take away our ability to act on our
own, became the target of more and more disdain,
as Americans inundated with notions of new
horizons leveled mounting attacks on what they
believed to be the domineering beliefs of their for-
bears, a system that essentially attributed the nature
of one’s soul’s survival to luck. Such is the nature
of Emily Dickinson’s probing, almost haunted
poetry; hers is unsatisfied verse, work permeated
by restlessness, want, and a need for a new savior.
Her yearning for something new was largely repre-
sentative of the mid-19th-century atmosphere that
gave way to a more liberal unitarianism and, finally,
transcendentalism.
Spearheaded by the disheartened Unitarian
preacher Ralph Waldo Emerson and his 1836
essay “Nature,” transcendentalists advanced the idea
that surviving and flourishing were merely func-
tions of recognizing one’s own innate divinity, an
endeavor undertaken not via the intermediary of
a preacher or priest in a church house, but alone.
Hence, although the number of transcendental-
ists within the United States never exceeded that
of an infinitesimal minority, their legacy survives
and is celebrated as integrally American due to the
manner in which emphasis on individuality and
independence mirror the country’s stated goals. For
example, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself ” (see
Leaves oF Grass) is an inductive celebration of the
nation-state as construed by each and every one of
its respective constituent citizens and environs. Hissurvival 113