ABSTRACT
For all his transcendent rhetoric, Emerson’s ambitions for America were rather narrowly focused: “though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to [an American] but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till” (29). Both figuratively and literally, Emerson’s judgment relies on a rich, organic image in this early moment from “Self-Reliance” (1841). The source of an American’s abilities, and the source of his responsibilities, is the plot he tills in the ground beneath his feet. Such a foundation, which William Faulkner later characterized as his “postage stamp of native soil,” is the local space from which the American artist springs and from which he receives the fullest inspiration. For Emerson, and for later writers such as Faulkner and Ralph Ellison, by connecting deeply to his local origins, the American artist accesses the universal good and connects that little parcel of land to the wider nation and to the wider world.
