Claims of Identity by Alan Lewis Silva
CLAIMS OF IDENTITY BY ALAN LEWIS SILVA
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Preface to “Bret Harte’s Later Stories”
Bret Harte earned his livelihood by writing exotic stories of mid-nineteenth century California such as “The Luck of Roaring Camp” (1868) and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” (1869). He lived in San Francisco and wrote most of his early stories and poems when California was experiencing a substantial rise in its population. This population growth came mainly from Anglo-American settlers after the discovery of gold in Sutter’s Mill in 1848, also coinciding with the end of Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Yet the irony of Harte’s voluminous western writings is that the majority of them were written while he lived abroad in Europe from 1878 to 1902. Historically, critics have attacked these later writings as inferior reproductions of his earlier stories.
However, the critical accusation that these later stories merely reproduce familiar plot lines is an oversimplification. In fact, it was during his residence in Europe that Harte experimented with genres other than the western, adapting his sympathetic representations of outsider characters (misfits such as gamblers, ramblers, and miners) in new ways. The specific dilemma this essay addresses is how Harte was able to represent these outsider figures apart from the western genre during his isolation from hearth and home.
The first section of this essay examines his character representations and themes in two of his German stories, “Peter Schroeder” (1879) and “A Legend Sammtstadt” (1878). Both of these stories were critically rejected (Scharnhorst, Bret Harte 72, 74, 76). They are also valuable artifacts because they represent a distinctly American perspective of living abroad.
This section will illuminate some of Harte’s personal feelings about Europe, displacement, and what it means to be an American. This section will also discuss how these relevant biographical contexts illuminate Harte’s growth and development as a writer. This is connected with some of the attacks on Harte’s reputation and an assessment of his personality traits.
The second section of this essay begins with a close reading of “The Lost Galleon” (1867), an early poem which is very good, and underappreciated, like most of Harte’s poetical works. The discussion of this poem is followed by an analysis of how outsider characters are represented in three of his most popular works. This mentions some of the critical judgments made about Harte’s literary merit, and some defenses to them.
REFERENCES:
https://sdbiblestudy.org/index.php/bookstore
https://sdbiblestudy.org/index.php/humanities
