“Wraiths of Memories . . .” Henry Beston’s Cape Cod in/and the American Tradition’

Since its discovery (early 1600) Cape Cod is a fundamental place for American memory. Three centuries later (1928), the American writer Henry Beston “re-discovers” the Cape recording his unique experience in The Outermost House: a masterly summary of historical, geographical, naturalistic, literary, artistic, and auto-biographical memories. Beston’s masterpiece is a treasure trove of intertextual literary echoes from the American canon (Thoreau, Emerson, Whittier, Whitman, Melville) and topoi of the American tradition (solitary life in the wilderness and relationship Man-Nature).