World Enough and Time: Analysis of Setting
"World Enough and Time: Analysis of Setting" explores critical locations that shape the narrative's events and themes. Central to the story is Frankfort, Kentucky, where key incidents unfold, including the assassination of Colonel Cassius Fort and the subsequent trial of Jeremiah Beaumont, a young attorney seeking revenge for personal betrayal. The courtroom drama highlights themes of injustice as Beaumont is convicted through perjury. Additionally, Saul County, a fictional representation of rural Kentucky, reflects the emotional and cultural exile experienced by Beaumont's wife, Rachael, and her family, who have retreated from their once-favored life in Virginia.
Another significant location is La Grand'Bosse's refuge, an outlaw hideout that diverges from historical accounts of the Kentucky Tragedy. This setting serves as a pivotal point for Beaumont's character development, illustrating his disillusionment with the myth of the American West as a land of opportunity. Instead, he encounters a harsh reality filled with lawlessness and betrayal. Overall, these settings provide a complex backdrop that enhances the narrative and reinforces the author's themes of societal decay and personal transformation.
World Enough and Time: Analysis of Setting
First published: 1950
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Philosophical realism
Time of work: 1801-1826
Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
Places Discussed
*Frankfort
*Frankfort. Kentucky city in which the crucial event of the novel occurs: the assassination of Colonel Cassius Fort, a prominent state politician. A young attorney, Jeremiah Beaumont, is avenging the earlier seduction and presumed slander of the woman who is now his wife. Beaumont’s trial is also held in a Frankfort courtroom where, not surprisingly, he is convicted through perjury rather than evidence. Awaiting his public hanging, Beaumont is joined in his cell by his wife, Rachael, who wishes to share his fate.
Saul County
Saul County. Fictional Kentucky county modeled on Simpson County of the real Kentucky tragedy. Rachael’s family has retreated to rural Kentucky from the more favored regions of Virginia, after reversals of fortune. Suffering both emotional and cultural exile, they live in relative isolation, comforted by a few books salvaged from more favored times, including the romantic verse of Lord Byron.
La Grand’Bosse’s refuge
La Grand’Bosse’s refuge. This setting, somewhere in a southwest direction, totally departs from the historical record of “the Kentucky Tragedy” and has generally been regarded as the novel’s least effective location, but it is essential to the development of Warren’s own themes. His characters, unlike their real-life models, are rescued from their Frankfort prison and taken to the lair of a half-breed pirate, La Grand’Bosse. The outlaw refuge serves as a further means of Beaumont’s enlightenment. Throughout the narrative he has spoken of “going west,” sharing the American myth of the West as a land of escape. Now, as he fraternizes with the utter dregs of society, he sees the untamed territory as it is, a land of lawlessness, gracelessness, and even further treachery.
Bibliography
Burt, John. “The Self-Subversion of Value: World Enough and Time.” In Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988. Discussion of the novel as romance and of Beaumont as unaware of the world’s complexity. The novel’s major images reinforce the idea that humanity’s best instincts lead to self-destruction.
Guttenberg, Barnett. “World Enough and Time.” In Web of Being: The Novels of Robert Penn Warren. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1975. Existential interpretation of Beaumont as an absolutist whose reliance upon the ‘idea’ has not prepared him for the ‘reintegration of self’ that is necessary when he perceives reality. The novel develops the conflict between humanity’s need for order and the world’s incoherence.
Justus, James H. “Dream and Drama: World Enough and Time.” In The Achievement of Robert Penn Warren. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981. Discussion of Warren’s double point of view, as the narrator at various times supports, undercuts, and simply relates Beaumont’s account. Another of Warren’s egoist idealists, Beaumont struggles but fails to remake the world to conform to his nebulous ideals.
Kallsen, Loren J. The Kentucky Tragedy: A Problem in Romantic Attitudes. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963. Collects nineteenth century publications which have served as the sources for literary treatments of this historical incident. Supposedly, these documents are Jeroboam Beauchamp’s confession, Ann Cook Beauchamp’s letters to a friend in Maryland, the transcript of the couple’s trial, and a brother’s vindication of Solomon Sharp’s character. The book also includes a bibliography and discussion questions.
McDowell, Frederick P. W. “The Romantic Tragedy of Self in World Enough and Time.” In Robert Penn Warren: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by John Lewis Longley, Jr. New York: New York University Press, 1965. Discussion of the novel’s theme as typical of Warren’s emphasis upon the self-induced alienation of the individual who cannot distinguish between romance and reality. Beaumont journeys west in search of Edenic innocence; instead, he finds a savage wilderness.