『한 미국농부로부터 온 편지들』:

Letters from an American Farmer : Crèvecoeur’s America

Since I have long been teaching J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur in the class of ‘the History of American Literature,’ his ‘famous’ 3rd Letter “What is an American” has been resourceful class materials to teach the issues of American identity, America’s national identity, “Americanness,” American values and its uniqueness, etc. The third letter has held its literary value and position not just as an advertizement of a nation of freedom, opportunity and abundance, let alone its geography and great nature, but as an important writing revealing the political and economic relation between North America and Europe in the late 18th-century. While, in the first 3 of 12 letters, Crèvecoeur introduces America almost like an ideal utopia, his latter letters reveal considerable anxieties over the political and social situations which occurred in the building of a new nation. Thus, the image of America Crèvecoeur creates in the early letters shows significant discrepancies from that of his latter letters. His Letters from an American Farmer narrates the ‘old’ problems of the ‘new America’ European immigrants were building in the new world, and also describes the hope and shock for the ‘American’ changes newly emerging in American social and political scenery. This study, examining the inter-relation between Crèvecoeur’s early and latter letters with emphasis on his ‘representative’ 3rd letter “What is an American,” pursues the meanings of American national identity and uniquely ‘American’ themes different from those of Europe.