ABSTRACT
The census made a maternal model of language central to the nation. At the same time, it obfuscated the mother's language and the respondent's own multilingualism. This chapter examines the fractured processes and fragmented encounters of American literature to understand how literary nationalism negotiates its relationship to linguistic pluralities. It examines the transatlantic as a mode of bringing certain texts and certain aspects of texts into view. The chapter argues that translation was not a peripheral exercise that occurred separate from the writing of an American national literature, but that translation was the fundamental methodology — even for writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne who tried to deny its relevance — through which national American writers understood their literary practice. It looks at Hawthorne's construction of a monolingual ontology that constantly strains against its multilingual contexts. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
