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INDEXES:
wit & humor
quotations
reviews
analysis:
novels
stories
poems
plays
films
General Index
KEY TERMS
irony
metaphor
symbol
archetype
allegory
obj. correlative
iceberg principle
dissociation
individuation
puritan
pastoral
transcendental
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Abbey, Edward (1927-1989), The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), eco-terrorist novel: analysis
Abish, Walter (1931- ), How German Is It (1980), sociopathetic Postmodernist consciousness: analysis
Adams, Henry (1838-1918), The Education of Henry Adams (1907), historian's influential autobiography
57 quotations of Adams:
youth, education, belief, experience, intelligence, objectivity, history, free speech, philosophy,
friendship, friends in power, women, Victorianism, love, politics, society, morality, law, human
nature, Naturalism, Realism, science, death.
Adler, Renata, Speedboat (1976), Expressionistic Postmodernist fragments: analysis
Expressionism
agrarianism
Aiken, Conrad (1889-1973), "Herman Melville" (1958)
Alcott, Louisa May (1832-1888): major popular Victorian novelist worldwide
Introduction to Alcott
58 quotations:
youth, education, society, character, aspiration, writing, fame, friendship, woman, love,
Victorianism, modern Feminism, faith in self-reliance, utopianism, literature, censors
Mark Twain, advice, death.
Little Women I & II (1868,69): Little Women and the Feminist Imagination: Criticism, Controversy,
Personal Essays, Scholarship (1999): Table of Contents
46 brief responses to Little Women
how radical Feminists revised Little Women (1983): analysis
Feminism in American literature
Alcuin (1797), first feminist tract in America, Charles Brockden Brown: quotations
allegory
America as a symbol: brief history & 130 quotations
"American Authors" (c.1848): group portrait before emergence of Melville, Thoreau, and Whitman
American authors of 20th century most prized by book collectors (1991)
American dramas: Index to analyses of 33 American plays by the major dramatists
Postmodernism: drama
American fiction, The Four Narrative Methods and Other Techniques in: Caroline Gordon & Allen Tate
American films: Index to analyses of 28 literary films, mostly adaptations of classics
Postmodernism: Hollywood
American "higher" education since the 1960s
American Indian captivity narratives: list and commentary
"The Captive" (1932), Caroline Gordon: white woman captured by Indians: analysis by 12 critics
American Indian literature:
Chief Tahgahjute of the Cayuga & Mingoes protests atrocity (1774)
Chief Brant of the Mohawks appeals for redress for loss of land (1776)
Chief Sogoyewapha (Red Jacket) of the Senecas defends his religion (1805)
Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnee demands land rights (1810)
Chief Tecumseh accuses British general of cowardice (1813)
Chief Pushmataha of the Chocktaw expresses friendship to whites (1824)
Chief Black Hawk of the Sac laments defeat with defiance (1832)
Chief Waowawanaonk of the Iroquois asks to be buried in New York (1847)
Chief Seattle of the Salish accepts treaty (1854): analysis
Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce surrenders (1877): commentary
Black Elk Speaks (1932), ed. John Neihardt: 56 quotations
from the major work of Indian literature humor from Black Elk Speaks
House Made of Dawn (1968), novel, N. Scott Momaday: analysis by 4 critics
The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), mixed genres: analysis by 20 critics
Ceremony (1977), Leslie Marmon Silko: analysis
Love Medicine (1984,1993), Louise Erdrich: analysis by 5 critics
The Beet Queen (1986): analysis by 2 critics
Tracks (1988): analysis by 4 critics
Winterkill (1984), Craig Lesley, novel of contemporary NW Indian life: review
Winter in the Blood (1974), novel, James Welch: review
The Death of Jim Loney (1979): review
Fools Crow (1986), historical novel about last stand of the Blackfeet: review
The Indian Lawyer (1990): review
American literary fiction about wars:
The American Revolution: list
The Civil War: list
World War I: list
World War II: list
Vietnam War: list
Iraq/Afghanistan Wars
American literary fictions containing spirits and ghosts, the 19 best:
The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Nathaniel Hawthorne: analysis
The Turn of the Screw (1898), Henry James: analysis by 20 critics
"The Jolly Corner" (1898), James: analysis by 12 critics
The Octopus (1901), Frank Norris: analysis by 15 critics
"Flowering Judas" (1930), Katherine Anne Porter: analysis by 30 critics
"The Cracked Looking-Glass" (1932), Porter: analysis by 14 critics
"The Enemies" (1938), Caroline Gordon: analysis by 4 critics
Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), Katherine Anne Porter: analysis by 28 critics
The Women on the Porch (1944), Caroline Gordon: analysis by 22 critics
"The Presence" (1948), Caroline Gordon: analysis by 9 critics
The Strange Children (1951), Caroline Gordon: analysis by 15 critics
The Violent Bear It Away (1960), Flannery O'Connor: analysis by 33 critics
The Glory of Hera (1972), Caroline Gordon: analysis by 31 critics
Journey to Ixtlan (1972), Carlos Castaneda: commentary
The Woman Warrior (1976), Maxine Hong Kingston: analysis by 21 critics
Housekeeping (1980), Marilynne Robinson: analysis by chapter
The River Why? (1983), David James Duncan: 7 reviews
Beloved (1988), Toni Morrison: analysis by 24 critics
The Road (2006), Cormac McCarthy:analysis in detail
American literary fictions of the 20th-century counterculture (1958-76):
Postmodernism: countercultural fiction
On the Road (1958), bible of the Beatniks, Jack Kerouac: analysis
"The Beat Generation" (1959), Wolfgang Fleischmann
Naked Lunch (1959), gay & drug shock fiction, William Burroughs: review
"Mass Society and Postmodern Fiction" (1959), Irving Howe
Catch-22 (1961), WWII absurdist metaphor of war, Joseph Heller: analysis by 7 critics
"10 Rebel Victim Types" (1962), Ihab Hassan
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), freedom vs society, Ken Kesey: analysis by 15 critics
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), cynical Expressionist satire, Thomas Pynchon: analysis by chapter
25 critics discuss The Crying of Lot 49 as epitome of Postmodernism
Trout Fishing in America (1967), flimsy hip pastoralism, Richard Brautigan: analysis by 2 critics
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), hip bus tour of Kesey & pranksters, Tom Wolfe: analysis
Slaughterhouse Five (1969), anti-WWII bombing, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: analysis by Michael Crichton
Another Roadside Attraction (1972), adolescent hippie cartoon, Tom Robbins: countercultural fiction
Journey to Ixtlan (1972), Carlos Casteneda: atheist sorcerer wars against society--drug trips
The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975), eco-terrorist manual, Edward Abbey: analysis
Going after Cacciato (1976), anti-Vietnam War, impressive style, Tim O'Brien: analysis by 2 critics
American literary forms:
Rise of the novel
Primary modes of the novel
Historical survey: the short story to 1957, Wallace Stegner
Historical survey: free verse
American literary modes:
Puritanism
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Realism
Naturalism
Impressionism
Imagism
Expressionism
Modernism
Postmodernism
Minimalism
Gothicism
Victorianism
American literary novels about Hollywood: annotated list
American literature:
periods of (1620-present)
cycle of, by Robert E. Spiller (1957)
most seminal idea of 17th century: "Liberty is the proper end and object of authority." Winthrop
most seminal idea of 18th century: "All men are created equal." Jefferson
most seminal idea of 19th century: "Nature is the symbol of spirit." Emerson
most seminal idea of 20th century: "Unreal City. I had not thought death had undone so many." Eliot
most successful hoax: The Crucible (1953), Arthur Miller: analysis by 18 critics
American literature and the academy:
New Criticism
Postmodernism
A New Life (1961), leftist novel by Bernard Malamud: quotations
Modern Language Association politicized (1968)
Feminism in American literature: Four Modes
Feminist period of American literature (1970-present)
Feminist censorship laws
Political Correctness (PC) & backlash
How Feminnists Censored Hemingway
how Feminists censored Hemingway's last novel The Garden of Eden (1986): analysis
White Noise (1985), satire of higher education by Don DeLillo: analysis by chapter
30 critics discuss White Noise
Feminist misreading of White Noise debunked: analysis
Oleanna (1992), play dramatizing Feminist fascism in higher ed by David Mamet: analysis by act
"University Life" (1997), satire of PC by A. B. Paulson: analysis
excerpt from "University Life": humor
Hollister vs Tuttle, et al (2001): federal court ruling against Feminist censorship
from Hollyworld (2006), Feminist professors rule: autobiographical fiction by Hollister
"What Killed American Lit" (2011)
"Me Studies" (2013), satire by Mead Embry (pseudonym of English professor)
prizewinning example of the worst academic writing: unintentional humor exposes Feminist
Feminist Mein Kampf (2018): hoax exposes Feminazis
American literature, attacks upon:
Postmodernism
Feminism in American literature: Four Modes
Feminist Period (1970-present)
Political Correctness
"Apparently Someone in the Department" (2004), anti-PC poem by George Drew
"The Decline of the English Department" (2009)
Feminists Killed the classics (2018)
Worst analyses of American literature:
Feminists assault The Blithedale Romance (1852), Nathaniel Hawthorne
Feminists revise Little Women(1868,69)
Feminists resemble Miss Watson in Huckleberry Finn (1884), Mark Twain
Liberals lie about None Shall Look Back (1937), Caroline Gordon
Feminists pervert The Mountain Lion (1947), Jean Stafford
Atheists blind to The Violent Bear It Away (1960), Flannery O'Connor
Postmodernist critics are fools on Ship of Fools (1962), Katherine Anne Porter
Feminists misread White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo
Feminists censor Hemingway's last novel, The Garden of Eden (1986)
Feminist smears and The Heath Anthology of [anti-]American Literature (1989)
American literature, belief in God
American literature, Christ-evoking figures in: over 80 examples
American literature, Feminism in: 4 modes
American literature, most underrated writers in:
Caroline Gordon (1895-1981)
Wallace Stegner (1909-1993), Introduction
American literature, Nature in: 6 perspectives
American literature, Socialism opposed in: 40 writers quoted
American novel contrasted to British:
analysis by Elizabeth Janeway (1954)
analysis by Richard Chase (1955)
American novels containing multiple coinciding allegories:
The Scarlet Letter (1850), Nathaniel Hawthorne: analysis by chapter
50 critics discuss The Scarlet Letter
Moby-Dick (1851), Herman Melville: concise analysis with 30 key metaphors
Moby-Dick contrasted to Pym (1838) by Poe
50 critics discuss Moby-Dick
The Blithedale Romance (1852), Hawthorne: analysis in detail
Huckleberry Finn (1884), Mark Twain: analysis by chapter
Rebuttals to 12 aesthetic and racial criticisms of Huckleberry Finn
The Professor's House (1925), Willa Cather: analysis by chapter
12 critics discuss The Professor's House
The Great Gatsby (1925), F. Scott Fitzgerald: analysis by chapter
50 critics discuss The Great Gatsby
The Sound and the Fury (1929), William Faulkner: analysis by section
50 critics discuss The Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying (1930), Faulkner: analysis by 15 critics
None Shall Look Back (1937), Gordon, Caroline: analysis in detail
Invisible Man (1952), Ralph Ellison: analysis by chapter
40 critics discuss Invisible Man
Henderson the Rain King (1959), Saul Bellow: analysis by 11 critics
Ship of Fools (1962), Katherine Anne Porter: analysis in detail
42 critics discuss Ship of Fools
American novels: Index to analyses of over 250 novels
American novels most underrated:
None Shall Look Back (1937), Gordon, Caroline: analysis in detail
The Catherine Wheel (1952) Jean Stafford: analysis in detail
The Violent Bear it Away (1960), Flannery O'Connor: analysis by chapter
Ship of Fools (1962), Katherine Anne Porter: analysis in detail
All the Little Live Things (1967), Wallace Stegner: analysis by chapter
Sleepless Nights (1979), Elizabeth Hardwick: analysis in detail
American novels, the 10 best since 1980:
The Second Coming (1980), Walker Percy: analysis by 5 critics
Housekeeping (1980), Marilynne Robinson: analysis by chapter
3 critics discuss Housekeeping
White Noise (1985), Don DeLillo: analysis by chapter
30 critics discuss White Noise
Feminist misreading of White Noise debunked
Blood Meridian (1985), Cormac McCarthy: analysis by 20 critics
Crossing to Safety (1987), Wallace Stegner: review
The Thanatos Syndrome (1987), Walker Percy: analysis by 3 critics
Beloved (1988), Toni Morrison: analysis by 24 critics
Review of Beloved by Margaret Atwood
All the Pretty Horses (1992), McCarthy: analysis by 12 critics
Gilead (2004), Robinson: 6 reviews
The Road (2006), McCarthy: analysis in detail
3 critics discuss God in The Road
Home (2008), Robinson: 6 reviews
Lila (2014), Robinson: 10 reviews
American poems, the 8 most influential:
"Song of Myself" (1855), Walt Whitman: analysis by 12 critics
"I heard a fly buzz when I died" (c.1862), Emily Dickinson: analysis by 10 critics
"In a Station of the Metro" (c.1910), Ezra Pound: analysis by 3 critics
"Sunday Morning" (1915), Wallace Stevens: analysis by stanza
10 critics discuss "Sunday Morning"
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1916), Robert Frost: analysis by 16 critics
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1916), T. S. Eliot: analysis by 15 critics
"The Waste Land" (1922), Eliot: analysis by 25 critics
12 basic principles in reading "The Waste Land"
"Red Wheelbarrow" (c.1923), W. Carlos Williams: analysis by 3 critics
American poetry:
Index to over 350 poems and analyses
Metrics and free verse: fundamentals
"On the Nature of Poetry" (1826): excerpts, William C. Bryant
Poetry as "Supernal Beauty" (1831-1850): excerpts, Edgar Allan Poe
"The Poet" (1844): excerpts, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Mysticism in "Song of Myself" (1855, 1881) by Walt Whitman
18 Transcendental characteristics in the poetry (1830-1886) of Emily Dickinson
"Imagism" (1909-1917): definitions and 12 poems
"Imagism and Vorticism" (1909-1920): excerpts, Ezra Pound
"Rules" from Preface to Some Imagist Poets (1915), Amy Lowell
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1919): excerpt, T. S. Eliot
Modernist poetic theory (1909-1962): quotations
"No ideas but in things," as in "Poem" (1923), William Carlos Williams
"A poem should not mean, but be": "Ars Poetica" (1926), Archibald MacLeish
Poetry as moral statement (1937): excerpts, Yvor Winters
"Narcissus as Narcissus" (1938), Allen Tate
"Two or Three Ideas" (1951), Wallace Stevens
"Poetry" (1951), Marianne Moore
"Three Statements" (1926, 1938, 1955), e. e. cummings
Postmodernism: poetry
historical survey: free verse
origin in experience and writing of a poem (1960), William Stafford
American Renaissances: 1850s & 1920s
American short novels (or novellas), the 12 best:
Benito Cereno (1855), Herman Melville: analysis by 17 critics
Daisy Miller (1879), Henry James: analysis by chapter
Washington Square (1881), James: film adaptation (1997): review
Billy Budd (1891), Melville: analysis by chapter
The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Stephen Crane: analysis by chapter
36 critics discuss The Red Badge of Courage
The Turn of the Screw (1898), James: analysis by 20 critics
Ethan Frome (1911), Edith Wharton: analysis by 8 critics
Old Mortality (1939), Katherine Anne Porter: analysis by 26 critics
Noon Wine (1939), Porter: analysis by 28 critics
Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), Porter: analysis by 28 critics
The Bear (1942), William Faulkner: analysis by 15 critics
The Old Man and the Sea (1952), Ernest Hemingway: analysis in detail
15 critics discuss The Old Man and the Sea
Wise Blood (1952), Flannery O'Connor: analysis by chapter
36 critics discuss Wise Blood
American short story:
short story definitions
Index to analyses of over 250 short stories, collections, and film adaptations
historical survey of the short story by Wallace Stegner (1957)
American styles analyzed:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Herman Melville
Frederick Douglass
Abraham Lincoln
Emily Dickinson
Henry James
Mark Twain
Stephen Crane
Elizabeth Madox Roberts
Gertrude Stein
Willa Cather
T. S. Eliot
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Hemingway
William Faulkner
Katherine Anne Porter
Caroline Gordon
Allen Tate
Jean Stafford
Elizabeth Hardwick
Flannery O'Connor
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Toni Morrison
Cormac McCarthy
American Westerns, the best:
The Prairie (1827), James Fenimore Cooper: analysis in detail
"The Blue Hotel" (1898), Stephen Crane: analysis by section
"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (1898), Crane: analysis by section
The Virginian (1902), Owen Wister: analysis by 5 critics
"The Captive" (1932), Caroline Gordon: analysis by 12 critics
"Tom Rivers" (1933), Gordon: analysis by 7 critics
Honey in the Horn (1935), H. L. Davis: analysis
The Ox-Bow Incident (1940), Walter Van Tilburg Clark: analysis by 3 critics
Green Centuries (1941), Gordon: analysis by 21 critics
The Big Sky (1947), A. B. Guthrie: commentary
Genesis (1959), Wallace Stegner: analysis by 5 critics
Belle Starr (1979), Speer Morgan: recommended
Lonesome Dove (1985), Larry McMurtry: recommended
Blood Meridian (1985), Cormac McCarthy: analysis by 20 critics
All the Pretty Horses (1992), McCarthy: analysis by 12 critics
American women's fiction before the Civil War: Feminist critics quoted
Victorianism
Amis, Kingsley (1922-1995): major British novelist censored by American Feminists (1985)
Stanley and the Women (1985): review in Time
Stanley and the Women: review in USA Today
Stanley and the Women: review in The New York Review Of Books
Anderson, Maxwell (1888-1959), prolific major dramatist, excelling at verse tragedy and history
Introduction to Anderson
Realism
What Price Glory? (1924), the failure of idealism
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) with others, classic screenplay and film
Elizabeth the Queen (1930), Elizabeth I
Elizabeth the Queen (1930), Queen Elizabeth I
Mary of Scotland (1933)
Both Your Houses (1933), Pulitzer Prize
Valley Forge (1934)
Winterset (1935), considered one of his two best, Drama Critics Circle Award
High Tor (1937), also one of his best, Drama Critics Circle Award
Joan of Arc (1947), screenplay with Andrew Solt
Anderson, Philip B.,"An Ode to Deconstruction" (c.1988): satire of English departments
Anderson, Sherwood (1876-1941): precursor of hippies revolutionized the short story
Introduction to Anderson
A Note on Sherwood Anderson (1953), William Faulkner
Modernism
Anderson in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
Winesburg, Ohio (1919), pastoral classic: overview analysis
Additional analyses of individual stories:
"The Book of the Grotesque," thematic overture defines the grotesque: analysis
"Hands," pathos of oppressed homosexual: analysis by 6 critics
"Paper Pills," futility of intellectualizing: analysis
"Mother," poignant inability to express love: analysis by 2 critics
"Nobody Knows," naive boy exploits pathetic girl: analysis
"The Thinker," Standard Oil agent is a slick dreamer: analysis
"The Teacher," ironic sexual assault: analysis
"An Awakening," sexual deprivation exemplifies Naturalism: analysis
"'Queer'," a frustrated nonconformist, not gay: analysis by 2 critics
"The Untold Lie," farm hand gets his girlfriend pregnant: analysis by 3 critics
"Sophistication," innocence and irony in modern world: analysis by 3 critics
30 critics discuss Winesburg, Ohio
Poor White (1920), industry impact on rural Midwest: analysis by 8 critics
Dark Laughter (1925), sentimental on race: analysis by 5 critics
"The Egg," The Triumph of the Egg (1921), his best story, on American Dream: analysis
34 critics discuss Anderson
Angell, Barbara (1935-1990), "Ulabel Lume" (c.1955): parody of Poe
Apocalypse Now (1979), powerful film, screenplay by John Milius & Francis Coppola:
the moral complexity of the Vietnam War: analysis
archetype
Atwood, Margaret (1939- ) (Canadian): feminist novelist not always warped by sexism
Surfacing (1972), representative Feminist becomes what she hates: analysis
The Handmaid's Tale (1985), both a criticism of radical Feminists as distinct
from liberal feminists and a paranoid pro-abortion attack on Christians
Feminist Period of (North) American literature (1970-present)
Feminism in American literature: Four Modes
Feminists criticize Atwood
Auden, W. H. (1907-1973), major poet, gay Marxist who became a Christian: difficult symbolist
Introduction to Auden
Modernism
"Herman Melville" (1933)
The Age of Anxiety (1948), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1953)
Selected Poems (1979)
Baldwin, James (1924-1987), black Jeremiah, eloquent prophet of revolution: fiction, plays, essays
Introduction to Baldwin
Ethnic fiction
Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), deadend lives of blacks in Harlem
The Fire Next Time (1963), fiery essays
Bankhead, Talullah (1902-1968), bawdy actress not Politically Correct: 25 witty quotations
Banks, Russell (1940- ), Continental Drift (1985), interracial affairs, heroic woman, voodoo: analysis
Postmodernism: Realism
Barlow, Joel (1754-1812): best of Neoclassical "Hartford wits"
Introduction to Barlow
humor from "The Hasty Pudding" (1796)
Barnes, Djuna (1892-1982): experimental fiction, lesbianism, artistic underground in 1920s Paris
Introduction to Barnes
"The Fate of the Gifted: Djuna Barnes" (1983), Elizabeth Hardwick
Postmodernism
Ryder (1928), pastiche, parody, malicious satire, virtuoso styles, decadence--dreadful father
Nightwood (1936), poetic Expressionism, marginalized people in 1920s Paris: analysis by 9 critics
16 critics discuss Barnes
Barth, John (1930- ): elite Atheist Postmodernist, fantasist and theorist
Introduction to Barth
40 quotations:
elitism, opinions, the novel is dead except for me, solipsism, drugs, writing, beyond Realism,
beyond Modernism, intellectual fantasy, Postmodernism, Postmodern technique, black humor,
conventions, death
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Giles Goat-Boy (1966), his universe is a university where a goat replaces Jesus: analysis by 5 critics
"Lost in the Funhouse" (1967), Postmodernism artificial, mechanical & trivial: commentary by Barth
"Lost in the Funhouse" (1968): analysis
Chimera (1973), National Book Award
Barthelme, Donald (1931-1989): surrealistic Academic Expressionist makes atheist collages
Introduction to Barthelme
50 quotations:
urbanity, design, art, abstract Expressionism, utopianism, disillusionment, politics, publishing,
style, Postmodern writing, mechanical creative process, reading, Postmodernism, Postmodern
women, metaphysics, death.
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
"Paraguay" (1968): commentary by Barthelme
Barthelme, Donald & Frederick (1943- ), satire of: "Barthelbe Brothers Mortuary" (2009), Hollister
Baum, Lyman Frank (1856-1919), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900): analysis by 2 critics
Beach, Sylvia (1887-1962), Hemingway liberates Shakespeare and Company (1956): WWII action
Modernism
Beat Generation (1950s), rehearsal for the 1960s: explanation
On the Road (1957), beatnik bible, by Jack Kerouac: analysis
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
"Squeal" (1957), Louis Simpson: parody of "Howl" (1955) by Allen Ginsberg
"On the Sidewalk" (1959), John Updike: parody of On the Road (1958)
Bellamy, Edward (1850-1898), Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), Socialist utopia: analysis by 2
Bellow, Saul (1915-2005): most awarded American novelist of late 20th century (Nobel Prize 1976)
Introduction to Bellow
117 quotations:
youth, education, autobiographical, human nature, Existentialism, Realism, Modernism,
Postmodernism, Postmodern literature, intellectual Expressionism, the humanities,
multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Feminism, politics, rhetoric, America, psychoanalysis,
writing, major theme, Transcendentalism, love, audience, style, independence, old age,
decline of civilization, the soul, God, death.
Modernism
Existentialism
Postmodernism
Dangling Man (1944), pre-WWII existentialism: analysis by 6 critics
The Victim (1947), complexity of guilt: analysis by 7 critics
Review of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952), Bellow
The Adventures of Augie March (1953), National Book Award, picaresque romp: analysis by 11 critic
Seize the Day (1956), much admired--transcending victimization: analysis by 4 critics
Henderson the Rain King (1959), Modernist transcendence in Africa: analysis by 11 critics
Herzog (1964), National Book Award, Jewish introvert writes letters: analysis by 4 critics
Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970), National Book Award, counter to 1960s counterculture: analysis by 2
Humboldt's Gift (1975), Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 4 critics
The Dean's December (1982): analysis
27 critics discuss Bellow
Benchley, Robert (1889-1945), famous wit, comic movie actor and screenwriter
42 quotations:
youth, autobiographical, arguing, working, drinking, literature, humor, women, human nature,
America, dogs, old age, death.
Benet, Stephen Vincent (1898-1943), poet won 2 Pulitzers
John Brown's Body (1929), incantatory historical poem of insurrection leading to Civil War
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1929)
Berra,Yogi (1925-2015), famous New York Yankees baseball catcher: 33 wacky quotations
Berry, D. C. (1942-), "Godiva" (c.2009): severe parody of Sylvia Plath
Berry, Wendell (1934- ), the leading American environmentalist Nature poet, novelist and essayist,
the pastoral agrarian writer who is actually a farmer--has been compared to Emerson, Thoreau,
Frost, Sandburg, and Aldo Leopold--featured in The Whole Earth Catalog
Introduction to Berry
Nathan Coulter (1960, 1985), young man takes over farm, parallel to Berry's life
A Place on Earth (1967, 1983), continuing his first novel, about spirit of a rural community
The Memory of Old Jack (1974), same themes of spiritual community
Collected Poems, 1957-1982 (1985)
Berryman, John (1914- ), 77 Dream Songs (1965), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Bierce, Ambrose (1842-1914?), "Bitter" Bierce: Civil War vet, major Gothic wit and Naturalist
Introduction to Bierce
200 quotations:
youth, autobiographical, reply to Descartes, reply to Wordsworth, replies to Benjamin Franklin,
doubt, politics, war, human nature, knowledge, gambling, emotional distance, murder, evolution,
women, history, The Devil's Dictionary (1911), death.
wit and humor: from "Our Tales of Sentiment" (c.1900): parody of popular fiction
Gothicism
Naturalism
Impressionism
Bierce in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1891), classic of Impressionism and TV: analysis by 4 critics
"Chickamauga" (1891), child's perspective on Civil War horror & gore: analysis
"The Boarded Window" (1891), psychologically complex Poe-like horror on the frontier: analysis
23 critics discuss Bierce
The Big Chill (1983), excellent popular film, screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan & Barbara Benedek:
how the 1960s counterculture turned out: analysis
Billings, Josh (1818-1885), joshing humorist with distant second billing to Mark Twain
69 quotations:
man, life, truth, knowledge, wisdom, happiness, fools, women, love, manners, words,
humor, imagination, genius, money, pride, sins, advice, health, old age, death.
Bishop, Elizabeth (1911-1979), major poet
The Magical Prose of Poets: Elizabeth Bishop (1984), Elizabeth Hardwick
"The Fish" (1955): analysis
Poems--North and South (1955), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Black Elk (1863-1950), Oglala Dakota Sioux Indian holy man rendered history of his tribe and his soul
56 extended quotations:
Black Elk speaks, archetypal order, pantheism, whites, voices, vision, reviving the waste land,
spiritual rebirth, war, battle of the Little Big Horn, Crazy Horse, the black road, circles, man and
woman, despair, wild west show, majesty, messiah, massacre at Wounded Knee.
Black Elk Speaks (1932), ed. John Neihardt, autobiography: the major work of American Indian lit
humor from Black Elk Speaks
Bogan, Louise (1897-1970), "The Dream" (1954): analysis
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1954)
Books that Changed America (1970), Robert B. Downs: selected list
Bowles, Paul (1910-1999): nihilistic wastelander tripping out in Tangier, Morocco
Introduction to Bowles
Gothicism
Postmodernism: Precursors
The Sheltering Sky (1949), Americans in terror among Arabs: analysis by 10 critics
18 critics discuss Bowles
Boyle, T. Coraghassen (1948- ), entertaining blend of research and eccentric Expressionist fiction
Introduction to Boyle
Postmodernism: "magical realism"--popular mode in South America (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
The Descent of Man (1979), witty story collection
Water Music (1981), dramatic adventures of Mungo Park exploring Africa: analysis
Greasy Lake and Other Stories (1985), pop culture satire
World's End (1987), family saga blending history and comedy set in Hudson Valley, NY
Brackenridge, Hugh H. (1748-1816): still funny satirist from American Revolution
Introduction to Brackenridge
Neoclassicism
Modern Chivalry (1792-1815), satire: commentary by 7 critics
humor from Modern Chivalry: our hero declines a duel over Miss Fog
Modern Chivalry, fictional film adaptation (2004)
Bradford, William (1590-1657): Pilgrim originated American literature
Introduction to Bradford
12 quotations:
pilgrims, Mayflower Compact, first winter, Communism fails, Merry Mount,
epidemic of sex offenses.
Puritanism
Calvinism
Of Plymouth Plantation 1620-1647: commentary
humor from Of Plymouth Plantation
Bradley, David (1950- ), The Chaneysville Incident (1981), black historian solves the mystery of
Moses Washington and the murder of 12 slaves, PEN/Faulkner Award
Ethnic Fiction
Bradstreet, Anne (1612-1672): first major American poet (1650)
Introduction to Bradstreet
29 quotations:
meditations, poetry
Puritanism
Calvinism
"The Flesh and the Spirit" (1678), the central theme throughout American literature: analysis
"A Letter to Her Husband" (1678), genders complement, as in later Victorianism: analysis
6 critics discuss Bradstreet
Brautigan, Richard (1935-1984), Trout Fishing in America (1967): analysis by 2 critics
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Hip Pastoralism
Brook Farm (1841-6): Utopian socialist communal experiment based on manifesto by Elizabeth Peabody,
satirized by member Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Blithedale Romance (1852): analysis in detail
11 critics discuss New England Transcendentalism
Brooks, Gwendolyn (1917-2000), popular black poet is down to earth
Introduction to Brooks
Folk Pastoralism
"A Song in the Front Yard" (1945)
"Sadie and Maud" (1945)
Annie Allen (1950), poems, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"We Real Cool" (1966)
Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810): first literary American novelist & first male feminist
Introduction to Brown
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Alcuin (1797), first feminist tract in America: 21 quotations
Wieland (1798), psychological Gothic horror, transition to Romanticism: analysis by 4 critics
fictional film adaptation of Wieland from Holywood (2004) by Hollister
3 critics discuss Brown
Brown, William Wells (1814-1884): escaped slave wrote first novel by a black American
Introduction to Brown
Preface to Clotel, or The President's Daughter (1853), by Brown
Clotel, Introduction by William E. Farrison: No proof Jefferson fathered daughter by a slave.
Bryant, William Cullen (1794-1878): the major poet before Whitman
Introduction to Bryant
"On the Nature of Poetry" (1826,1884): quotations
Romanticism
Nature in American literature
"Thanatopsis" (1817), popular classic introducing pantheism, transition to Romanticism: analysis
"The Prairies" (1832), mythos of westward movement: analysis
"William Cullen Bryant," by Poe (1846)
"Bryant," by James Russell Lowell (1848)
5 critics discuss Bryant
Bugeja, Michael J., "The Influence of Williams Carlos Williams" (2009): poem
Burroughs, William (1914-1997), Naked Lunch (1959), gay & drugs shock fiction: review
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Butler, Judith: Feminist awarded prize for worst academic writing during Feminist Period (1970-present)
Calvinism
Capote, Truman (1924-1984): gay celebrity stylist, TV personality and crime novelist
Introduction to Capote
"On Truman Capote and Flannery O'Connor" (1960): commentary by Caroline Gordon
Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948), precocious southern boy in creepy isolation: analysis by 9 critics
The Grass Harp (1951), poetic stories, recurrent theme of lost child
Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (1958): lightweight, with materialistic values
In Cold Blood (1965), exhaustive detail, based on true murders: analysis by 3 critics
Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel (1986), scandalous betrayal of his celebrity confidants
16 critics discuss Capote
Carlisle, Andrea, "Emily Dickinson's To-Do List" (1996)
Carver, Raymond (1938-1988): very influential short story writer edited to death
Introduction to Carver
Postmodernism: Realism
"Neighbors" (1976): analysis
"Cathedral" (1981), by far his best story: analysis
"Boxes" (1987): review
Castaneda, Carlos (1925?-1998): hip anti-social paranormal drug fiction posing as anthropology
Introduction to Casteneda
73 quotations:
revolution, on being a legend, why he became so popular, deception is the best policy, amorality,
denies hoax, drugs, temporary aid, sobriety, reason, ego, escaping responsibility, self-pity,
solipsism, atheist Existentialism, futility, mystery, Nature, sorcery, seeing, leap before you look,
equality, becoming a warrior, knowledge, death.
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Journey to Ixtlan (1972), best of the series: introduction & commentary by 12 critics
Cather, Willa (1873-1947): great Modernist novelist on the American West
Introduction to Cather
overview of Cather by Katherine Anne Porter
142 quotations:
childhood, relationship, country and people, friends, frontier past, old Nebraska, current Nebraska,
literary situation, mythic symbol, Nature, brute instincts, human nature, society, truth, reformers,
women writers, women and careers, religion, Platonism, art, the artist, artistic salvation, Sappho,
literature, short story and novel, Poe, American literature, style, Walt Whitman, Uncle Tom's
Cabin, Mark Twain and Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry James and Edith Wharton, Stephen Crane,
Kate Chopin, European literature, Realism, European Realism, local color, decadent Romanticism,
Victorianism, Modernism, writing, intuition and intellect, range, implications, economy,
her works, present age, death, epitaph.
archetype
pastoralisms
Neoclassicism
Realism
Modernism
Feminists assault Cather: rebuttal
The style of Cather: analysis by 34 critics
Cather Review of The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin
O Pioneers! (1913), classic on heroic settling of Nebraska: analysis by 13 critics
The Song of the Lark (1915), career of woman opera singer: analysis by 6 critics
My Antonia (1918), classic of agrarian and folk pastoralism: analysis by Wallace Stegner
10 critics discuss My Antonia
comparison of O Pioneers! with My Antonia: analysis
One of Ours (1922), World War I: analysis by 2 critics
A Lost Lady (1923), lamenting lost ideals of pioneers: analysis by 9 critics
The Professor's House (1925), Modernist masterpiece: analysis by chapter of her greatest novel
12 critics discuss The Professor's House
My Mortal Enemy (1926): analysis by 3 critics
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), spirituality in the early SW: analysis by 9 critics
Cather refuses to sell out to Hollywood
50 critics discuss Cather
censorship in American literature 1620 to 1934
censorship 1873-1934
"Puritanism as a Literary Force" (1917), mainly attacking Anthony Comstock: H. L. Mencken
censorship since 1985:
Feminist Period (1970-present)
Feminist censorship laws (1983-84)
Feminists censor Kingsley Amis (1985)
Feminists censor Ernest Hemingway (1986)
Feminists censor male writers (1988-present)
Feminists censor criticism of themselves (1989)
10 ideas censored as "dangerous" by Feminist AAUW (1994)
52 ideas censored by Feminist editors
419 words censored by Feminist editors
The Language Police (2003), Diane Ravitch: quoted
Hollister vs. Tuttle, et al: federal court ruling against Feminist censorship (2001)
Cheever, John (1912-1982), popular suburban New York short story writer & novelist
Introduction to Cheever
"Cheever; or, The Ambiguities" (1984), Elizabeth Hardwick
Realism (blended with fantastic is surRealism, a form of Expressionism)
Expressionism
"The Enormous Radio" (1947), surRealism
"The Swimmer" (1964), suburban despair made into a padded movie
The Wapshot Chronicles (1957), National Book Award
The Stories of John Cheever (1978), National Book Award
Chesterton, G. K. (British) (1874-1936), "After Walt Whitman": parody
Chicchinelli, Eugene (former diver), Underwater Rodeo: Saga of a Deep Sea Diver (2000): review
Chopin, Kate (1851-1904): Realist and vivid Impressionist precursor of Modernism
Introduction to Chopin
Victorianism
Realism
Naturalism
Impressionism
Feminists assault Chopin: rebuttal
"Desiree's Baby" (1893), racial irony: analysis by 2 critics
"A Respectable Woman" (1894): analysis
"The Story of an Hour" (1894): analysis by 2 critics
"Athenaise" (1895): analysis
"The Storm" (1898): analysis
The Awakening (1899), Realist debunks romance of the New Woman: analysis by chapter
The Awakening: concise analysis
The Awakening: negative review by Willa Cather
36 critics discuss The Awakening
46 critics differ on the ending of The Awakening: brief quotations
on filming The Awakening: from Follywood (2005)
Children of Light (1985), Robert Stone, fictional film adaptation of The Awakening: review
Children of Light: quotations
6 critics discuss Chopin
Christ-evoking figures in American literature: over 80 examples
Clark, John Abbot, "The Love Song of F. Scott Fitzgerald" (1955): parody of T. S. Eliot
Clark, Walter Van Tilburg (1909-1971), poet and fiction writer elevated lit of American West
Introduction to Clark
Realism
The Ox-Bow Incident (1940), classic prototypical western, lynching: analysis by 3 critics
The Track of the Cat (1949), ranch life and the hunt
The Watchful Gods and Other Stories (1950)
Collins, Billy (1941- ), "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" (1998): humor
Cooper, James Fenimore (1789-1851): wrote the American epic of discovery, invented frontier hero
Introduction to Cooper
29 quotations:
Nature and God, culture, ideal synthesis, westward movement, conservation, the waste land,
Natty Bumppo as mythic figure, Christianity, Indians, race, equality, property, society,
newspapers, politics, Democracy, the minority, government.
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
Victorianism
The Leatherstocking Saga, 5 heroic romantic adventure novels (1823-41): overview
Preface to the Saga (1850)
chronology of the Saga
The Prairie (1827), westward movement, most complex of the Saga: analysis
"Muck-a-Muck" (1867), parody of Cooper by Bret Harte
"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895), humor by Mark Twain
Twain's literary offenses against Cooper: analysis
18 critics discuss Cooper
Cope, Wendy (British) (1945- ), "Waste Land Limericks": parody of T. S. Eliot (1986)
Countercultural Fiction
Crace, John (British) (1956- ), "The Crying of Lot 49": parody of Thomas Pynchon (2008)
Cranch, Christopher (1813-1892), cartoon of Emerson as "transparent eyeball" (1839): humor
Gnosis (1844): Transcendentalist poem
Crane, Hart (1899-1933): Romantic Modernist poet highly regarded by other poets--famous suicide
Introduction to Crane
Modernism
Expressionism
"Black Tambourine", White Buildings (1926), social position of the black man: analysis
"At Melville's Tomb" (1926): analysis by Harriet Monroe, Hart Crane, Cleanth Brooks &
Robert Penn Warren
"To Emily Dickinson" (1926)
The Bridge (1930), mythic epic influenced by Whitman: analysis by 15 critics
"Hart Crane" (c.1938), Julian Symons
"Words for Hart Crane" (1959), Robert Lowell
22 critics discuss Crane
Crane, Stephen (1871-1900): great innovative boy wonder died at 28
Introduction to Crane
104 quotations:
family, religion, apprenticeship, education, New York Bowery, Maggie, honesty, art, Realism,
Naturalism, Impressionism, Expressionism, alliteration and assonance, irony, understatement,
Existentialism, Red Badge, other works, human nature, poverty, politics, heroism, patriotism,
fame, death, last words.
Naturalism
Impressionism
Crane in historical survey of short story by Stegner
The style of Crane: analysis by 43 critics
parody of Crane by O. Henry, "The Blue Blotch of Cowardice" (1896)
parody of Crane by Frank Norris, "The Green Stone of Unrest" (1897)
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), first American Naturalist novel: analysis by 28 critics
The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Impressionist classic Civil War novel: analysis by chapter
The Red Badge of Courage film adaptation by John Huston (1951): analysis
36 critics discuss The Red Badge
"The Veteran" (1896), sequel to The Red Badge, Henry as heroic old man: analysis
"The Open Boat" (1897): classic of Naturalism & Impressionism: close analysis by section
"The Open Boat": commentary by Caroline Gordon
"The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" (1898), comic prototype of Western: analysis by section
"The Blue Hotel" (1898): Naturalism, debunks stereotypes of Western: analysis by section
"The Monster" (1898), dehumanization of a black hero: analysis by 3 critics
"The Monster": fictional film adaptation, merged with true untold story of heroic black
tank commanders in WW II
"An Episode of War" (1899): dissociation & iceberg principle, pre-Hemingway: analysis
6 free verse poems by Crane (1895-99), pre-Imagism: with commentary
24 critics discuss Crane
Crevecoeur, J. Hector St. John de (1735-1813): first American pastoralist
Introduction to Crevecoeur
14 quotations:
American farmer, America as a symbol, agrarian pastoralism, husband and wife as partners,
early Victorianism, animals, machines, What is an American?, the melting pot, the New Man,
ethnicity.
Agrarian Pastoralism
Letters from an American Farmer (1782), classic defines agrarian ideal: analysis
"What Is an American?" from Letters
5 critics discuss Crevecoeur
Cullen, Countee (1903-1946), poet laureate of Harlem Renaissance
Introduction to Cullen
"Incident" (1925): black man recalls first being called the N-word as a boy
"Yet Do I Marvel" (1925), inscrutability of God to a black poet
cummings, e. e. (1894-1962): major Modernist poet known for innovative typography
Introduction to cummings
pastoralisms
Expressionism
Modernism
The Enormous Room (1923), imprisonment by French in WWI: commentary by 5 critics
"chanson innocent" (1923), entire model of metaphors in one little poem: analysis
"Portrait" (1926), Expressionist typography: analysis
Him (1927), abstract Expressionist play: analysis
"since feeling is first" (1926), ecstatic Romantic
"nobody loses all the time" (1926): humor
"somewhere i have never traveled," stream of consciousness (1931)
anyone lived in a pretty how town (1940): analysis
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1957)
24 critics discuss cummings
Cunningham, J. V. (1911-1985), Neoclassical poet: 31 witty quotations in verse
cybernetic fiction: the machine as metaphor (1985)
Dacey, Philip (1939-2016), "Amherst with Fries" (1999), homage to Emily Dickinson: humor
Davis, H. L. (1896-1960): first distinguished novelist in the Northwest
Introduction to Davis
Realism: most true-to-real-life of western Realists
Honey in the Horn (1935), frontier Oregon 1906-08, Pulitzer Prize: analysis
humor from Honey in the Horn: quotations
8 critics discuss H. L. Davis
Davis, Rebecca Harding (1831-1910), "Life in the Iron Mills" (1861): early Realism
DeForest, John W. (1826-1906), Civil War officer wrote first realistic American novel
Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867), Civil War: analysis by 4 critics
Realism
Deism
DeLillo, Don (1936- ): major Postmodernist analyst of Postmodernism and satirist of mass culture
with a wide scope--consistently interesting and often funny
Introduction to DeLillo
160 quotations:
youth, Catholic upbringing, family, education, career, privacy, fame, entertainment, film,
countercultural pastoralism, pacifism, love, sex, women, politics, terrorism, human nature,
America, American tradition, society of kids, America as myth, pride in America, consumer
capitalism, Postmodernism, urbanity, dehumanization, literary decadence, Political Correctness,
Feminism, technology, disbelief, reticence, dead yet dangerous, rebellion, audience, writing,
sentences, description, plots, primitive emotion, the novel, Realism, Expressionism, influences,
death, Existentialism, hope.
Postmodernism
DeLillo and religious faith: analysis
summaries of 10 novels by DeLillo: commentary by 3 critics
Americana (1971), cinematography
End Zone (1972), sports
Great Jones Street (1973), popular music
Ratner's Star (1976), theoretical science
Players (1977), espionage and sexual liberation
Running Dog (1978), technologies of patriarchal power
The Names (1982), mysterious contemporary questing in Greece and India: analysis by 7 critics
White Noise (1985), popular satire of materialism, professors & Feminism, National Book Award:
analysis by chapter
Feminist misreading of White Noise debunked
30 critics discuss White Noise
humor from White Noise
Libra (1988), Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory: analysis by 4 critics
Underworld (1997), non-linear Postmodernist pastiche: analysis by 2 critics
DeVries, Peter (1910-1993): popular novelist: 21 witty quotations
The Dial (1840-44): The Editors to the Reader [Emerson & Fuller]
"The Tone Transcendental," by Poe: ridicule
Dickinson, Emily (1830-1886): a supreme lyric poet in world literature
Introduction to Dickinson
134 quotations:
home, solitude, renunciation, living, toil, society, fame, Civil War, Nature, love, ecstasy,
compensation, pain, poetry, truth, psyche, individuation, holistic vision, Existential doubt,
faith, God, from letters, old age, death, last words, immortality.
Puritanism
Victorianism
Existentialism
Transcendentalism
18 transcendental characteristics in Dickinson
spirituality of Dickinson: analysis by Sister Mary Humiliata
style of Dickinson: analysis by 36 critics
"Papa above! #61 (c.1859): analysis
"Success is counted sweetest" #67 (c.1859): analysis by Richard Wilbur
"Exultation is the going --" #76 (c.1859): analysis
"These are the days when Birds come back" #130 (c.1859): analysis by 5 including George Arms
"I'm 'wife' - I've finished that --" #199 (c.1860): analysis by David S. Reynolds
"I taste a liquor never brewed" #214 (c.1860): analysis by 7 including Genevieve Taggard
"I like a look of Agony" #241 (c.1861): analysis by David Porter
"Wild Nights -- Wild Nights!" #249 (c.1861): analysis by Lilia Melani
"There's a certain Slant of light" #258 (c.1861): analysis by 12 including Yvor Winters
"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain" #280 (c.1861): analysis by 8 including R. W. Franklin
"I got so I could take [hear?] his name --" #293 (c.1861): analysis by 3 including R. P. Blackmur
"The Soul selects her own Society --" #303 (c.1862): analysis by 4 including John Crowe Ransom
"There came a Day at Summer's full" #322 (1861): analysis by 4 including Mother Mary Anthony
"After great pain, a formal feeling comes" #341 (c.1862): analysis by 7 including Brooks and Warren
"I read my sentence - steadily -" #412 (c.1862): analysis by Charles R. Anderson
"I died for Beauty" #449 (c.1862): analysis by Richard Chase and F. I. Carpenter
"I heard a Fly buzz when I died" #465 (c.1862): analysis by 10 including Caroline Hogue
"The World is not Conclusion" #501 (1862): analysis by 4 including Thomas H. Johnson
"I'm ceded -- I've stopped being Theirs --" #508 (c.1862): analysis by 6 including Adrienne Rich
"I started Early -- Took my Dog" #520 (1862): analysis by 7 including Laurence Perrine
"I like to see it lap the Miles" #585 (1862): analysis by 4 including George Whicher
"A still - Volcano - Life --" #601 (c.1862): analysis by 4 including Marinela Carvalho Freitas
"Because I could not stop for Death" #712 (c.1863): analysis by 17 including Allen Tate
"My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun" #754 (c.1863): analysis by 9 including Adrienne Rich
"My Faith is larger than the Hills -- #766 (c.1863): analysis by Shira Wolosky
"I felt a Cleaving in my Mind #937 (c.1864): analysis by 3 including Karen Ford
"A narrow Fellow in the Grass" #986 (c.1865): analysis
"Further in Summer than the Birds" #1068 (c.1866): analysis by 8 including Yvor Winters
"Title divine - is mine!" #1072 (c.1862): analysis by 6 including Sharon Cameron
"Tell all the Truth but tell it Slant" - #1129 (c.1868): analysis by 2 including Gary Lee Stonum
"He preached upon 'Breadth' till it argued him narrow" -- #1207 (c.1872): analysis
"A Route of Evanescence" #1463 (c.1879): analysis by 7 including Rebecca Patterson
"As imperceptibly as Grief" #1540 (c.1865): analysis by James E. Miller, Jr.
"Of God we ask one favor" #1601 (c.1884): analysis by Archibald MacLeish
"To Emily Dickinson" (1926), Hart Crane
"To Emily Dickinson" (1930), Yvor Winters
"Emily Dickinson" (c.1930-86), Richard Eberhart
"I Am in Danger - Sir --'" (1950-99), Adrienne Rich
"Altitudes" (1956), Richard Wilbur
"Emily Dickinson" (c.1968-98), Linda Pastan
"Because I Could Not Dump" (1981), Andrea Paterson: parody
"The Impossible Marriage" (1986), Donald Hall: humor
"Emily's Words" (1990), Leslie Monsour
"Emily Dickinson Leaves a Message to the World, Now That Her Homestead in Amherst Has
an Answering Machine" (1992), X. J. Kennedy: humor
"The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson" (1994), Galway Kinnell
"After the Poetry Reading" (1996), Maxine Kumin: humor
"Emily Dickinson's To-Do List" (1996), Andrea Carlisle: humor
"Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes" (1998), Billy Collins: humor
"Amherst with Fries" (1999), Philip Dacey: humor
50 critics discuss Dickinson
Didion, Joan (1934-2021), literary journalist, screenwriter and Realistic novelist on current events
Introduction to Didion
"In the Wasteland: Joan Didion" (1997), Elizabeth Hardwick
Slouching Toward Bethlehem (1967), wise insightful essays exposing the counterculture
Play It As It Lays (1970), decadent Hollywood slut disintegrates: analysis by 3 critics
dissociation of sensibility
Doctorow, E. L. (1931-2015) World's Fair (1985), historical collage, National Book Award
Doolittle, Hilda (H. D.) (1886-1961), "The Pool" &
"Oread": Imagist poems (c.1915)
Dos Passos, John (1896-1970): Marxist technical innovator turned conservative after major fiction
Introduction to Dos Passos
Naturalism
Modernism
Three Soldiers (1921), WWI anti-war: analysis by 4 critics
Manhattan Transfer (1925), collectivist novel, mass society Naturalism: analysis by 6 critics
U.S.A. (1930-36), very dark Marxist critique of capitalist America, a panoramic historical trilogy
combining various interesting original fiction techniques: analysis by 14 critics
23 critics discuss Dos Passos
Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895): greatest escaped slave crusader against slavery
52 quotations:
slaves, America, Christianity, freedom, dignity, integrity, education, we are in this together,
rebellion, free speech, lecturing, agitation, integration, progress, coalition with women's rights
movement, self-reliance, Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845): analysis
The style of Douglass: analysis by 7 critics
Doulis, Thomas, The Open Hearth (2000), masterful Greek immigrant Realism in steel mills: review
Ethnic Fiction
Dreiser, Theodore (1871-1945): from major Naturalist to Christian mystic
Introduction to Dreiser
64 quotations:
home, father, Puritan upbringing, the conventional mind, his own moralizing, myth of agrarian
pastoralism, glamour of the Big City, sex, poverty, human suffering, idealistic Realism,
Naturalism, motif of fluidity in Sister Carrie, allegory, style, chemistry of being, myth of
individuality, mystery, uncertainty, human nature, Socialism, Communist activities, futility
of reform, evolution, God.
Naturalism
Philosophy of Dreiser
Sister Carrie (1900), young woman succeeds as actress, classic model of Naturalism: concise analysis
24 critics discuss Sister Carrie
Jennie Gerhardt (1911), based on life of Dreiser's sister: analysis by 8 critics
An American Tragedy (1925), young man corrupted by the American Dream: analysis by 12 critics
The Bulwark (1946), posthumous, mystical Quaker Christianity: recommended
24 critics discuss Dreiser
Drew, George, "Apparently Someone in the Department" (2004): politically incorrect poem
Dugan, Alan (1923-2003), poet
Funeral Oration for a Mouse (1961)
Poems (1961), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Dunbar, Paul (1872-1906): first prominent black American writer, accepted by both blacks and whites
Introduction to Dunbar
30 quotations:
youth, education, blacks and whites, Harriet Beecher Stowe, society, morality, writing, love, God,
vision, death, immortality.
"We Wear the Mask" (c.1895): motif in black cultural history
Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896), 105 of his best poems, in black dialect and in literary English
"Theology" (1899): humor
"Harriet Beecher Stowe" (1899): tribute
The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories (1900), best fiction with black characters and themes
Duncan, David James (1952- ), The River Why? (1983), comic transcendental fishing novel: 7 reviews
The Brothers K (1992), family baseball novel: recommended
Eastman, Max (1883-1969), leftwing social critic and political activist: 10 quotations
Eberhart, Richard (1904-2005): influential poet
"Emily Dickinson" (c.1930)
"The Groundhog" (c.1960): analysis by 2 critics
"Worldly Failure" (1960), on Robert Frost
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1961)
Selected Poems 1930-1965 (1966), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"To William Carlos Williams" (1988)
Edwards, Jonathan (1703-1758): greatest American theologian
Introduction to Edwards
18 quotations from "Personal Narrative" (1739):
childhood affections, God's sovereignty, epiphany, ineffability, pastoralism, transfiguration,
true grace, desire for rebirth, dedication, wilderness retreat, spiritual death, acceptance of
doctrines, union with Christ, Transcendent consciousness, innate depravity, humility,
God's will be done.
Puritanism
Calvinism
"Personal Narrative" (1739), individuation to salvation with archetypal elements: analysis
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741), most famous American sermon: excerpt
Edwards and Edward Taylor: Calvinist mystics compared
American tradition of "Highbrow and Lowbrow": Edwards & Franklin
Edwards to Emerson, by Perry Miller: quotations
"Mr. Edwards and the Spider" (1944), poem by Robert Lowell: analysis
"The Theology of Jonathan Edwards" (1957), poem by Phillis McGinley
fictional comic biopic of Edwards (2004), Hollister
Eliot, T. S. (1888-1965): supreme Modernist poet, dramatist & critic (Nobel Prize 1948)
Introduction to Eliot
112 quotations:
home, youth, education, his poetry is American, early verse, aspiration, real and ideal,
experience, knowledge, truths, western civilization, the soul, "The Waste Land," popular culture,
human nature, feelings, women, Romanticism, conservatism, life, Four Quartets, literature,
literature and religion, archetypal art, creativity, transcendence, the poet today, bad writers,
writing plays, tradition and the individual talent, argument for canon of classics, objective
correlative, dissociation of sensibility, mythic method, historical sense, poetic method,
obscurity, the meaning of a poem, Nobel Prize, old age, death, immortality.
Neoclassicism
Modernism
Expressionism
The style of Eliot: analysis by 52 critics
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915): analysis by 15 critics-influential poem familiar to
most educated Americans until after the 1960s
"Portrait of a Lady" (1917): analysis by 3 critics
"Sweeney Among the Nightingales" (1918): analysis by 2 critics
"Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920), his major critical essay: excerpt
"Gerontion" (1920): analysis by 6 critics
"The Waste Land" (1922), most influential poem of 20th century--as upon Hemingway, Fitzgerald,
Djuna Barnes, Faulkner, cummings, Paul Bowles, Nathanael West, Katherine Anne Porter,
Caroline Gordon, Flannery O'Connor, Tennessee Williams, Saul Bellow, Thomas Pynchon,
Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Walker Percy, and Marilynne Robinson: analysis by 25 critics
12 basic principles in reading "The Waste Land"
"The Hollow Men" (1925): analysis by 6 critics
"Ash Wednesday" (1930): analysis by 7 critics
Murder in the Cathedral (1935) drama: analysis
Four Quartets (1943): analysis by 9 critics
The Cocktail Party (1949) drama: analysis
Eliot psychoanalyzes Mark Twain
"The Waste Land" (1925), James Joyce: parody
"T. S. Eliot" (1969), Robert Lowell
"The Love Song of J. Omar Khayyam" (1973), Roy Fuller: parody
"Waste Land Limericks" (1986), Wendy Cope: parody
50 critics discuss Eliot
Elkin, Stanley (1930- ), comic fiction writer with entertaining style, rhetoric, puns, wit
Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits (1980)
Ellison, Ralph (1914-1994): first major black novelist wrote a world class Modernist novel
Introduction to Ellison
134 quotations:
youth, family, education, writers, New York, individuation, learning to write, standards,
classic American literature, Hemingway, Realism, Modernism, style, Expressionism, Richard
Wright, ethnicity, art, Marxism, protest writing, invisibility, Invisible Man, folklore, Naturalism,
Existentialism, light in the basement, America, integration, "Negro as a Symbol of Man,"
transcendence, music, decadence, Postmodernism, Postmodern critics, Postmodern fiction,
political parties, favorable reception, Shadow and Act, black President, the end.
Naturalism
Existentialism
Modernism
Expressionism
Invisible Man (1952), landmark individuation of black man is universal, National Book Award:
analysis by chapter
Review of Invisible Man by Saul Bellow (1952)
24 critics discuss Invisible Man
Embry, Mead (pseudonym of English professor), "Me Studies" (2013): satire of narcissistic professors
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882): Transcendentalist, most seminal American philosopher
Introduction to Emerson
stature of Emerson
197 quotations:
liberty, independence, American Scholar, idealistic Existentialism, individuation, monism,
Nature, pastoralism, Puritanism, Universal Soul, centered, Transcendental consciousness,
recycling spirit, pantheism, religion, Idealism, intellect, Genius, unbalanced minds, human
nature, need for redemption, history, the Greeks, archetypal thinking, circles, experimentation,
imagination, literature, optimism, love, marriage, friends, the common, humility, society,
Victorianism, government, progress, teachers, quotations, travel, intoxications, overcoming
depression, compensation, old age, advice, death, immortality.
archetype
Romanticism
Nature in American literature
New England Transcendentalism
Emerson in the history of philosophy, by Herbert W. Schneider
reading Emerson: 6 critics explain his epigrammatic prose style
Nature (1836), most seminal work in American literature: 24 critics discuss
"The American Scholar" (1837), landmark oration: commentary by 8 critics
"Divinity School Address" (1838): commentary by 4 critics
The Dial (1840-44): The Editors to the Reader [Emerson & Fuller]
Self-Reliance (1841), major American theme: commentary by 5 critics
"The Over-Soul" (1841), cosmology: commentary by 5 critics
"The Transcendentalist" (1842): Emerson's definition
"The Poet" (1844): Emerson lecture reviewed by Walt Whitman
"The Poet" (1844): lecture by Walt Whitman
"Concord Hymn" (1847): memorial to the American Revolution
"Brahma" (1856), influence of Asian transcendentalism: analysis
"The Tone Transcendental" (c.1841), Poe ridicules The Dial: humor
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1841), satire of NE Transcendentalists by Poe: humor
Letter to Walt Whitman (1955) by Emerson
Whitman walks with Emerson (1860)
"Brahma" (c.1864): parody by Andrew Lang
cartoon of Emerson as "transparent eyeball," by Christopher Cranch (1837)
35 critics discuss Emerson, including Hawthorne & Melville
English Departments as depicted in literature:
The Lesson (1954), play by Eugene Ionesco (European), academic fascism: analysis
A New Life (1961), novel by Bernard Malamud, New York leftist among hicks out West: quotations
Changing Places (1975), Small World (1984), academic satire by David Lodge (British): noted
"An Ode to Deconstruction" (c.1988), poem by Philip B. Anderson
Oleanna (1992), play dramatizing Feminist fascism by David Mamet: analysis
"University Life" (1997), humorous allegory of Political Correctness by A. B. Paulson: analysis
"Apparently Someone in the Department" (2004), poem about PC by George Drew
from Hollyworld (2006), Feminist professors rule, autobiographical fiction by Michael Hollister
"Me Studies" (2013), satire of "identity" professors, Mead Embry (pseudonym of English professor)
Erdrich, Louise (1954- ), the major living American Indian writer
Introduction to Erdrich
archetype
pastoralisms
Ethnic Fiction
Love Medicine (1984, 1993), folk pastoralism on "the rez": analysis by 5 critics
The Beet Queen (1986): analysis by 2 critics
Tracks (1988): analysis by 4 critics
The Round House (2011), National Book Award
The Sentence (2021)
summaries of 8 novels by Erdrich: commentary
7 critics discuss Erdrich
Ethnic Fiction
Existentialism
Expressionism
Farrell, James T. (1904-1979), leftwing (Trotskyite) urban Naturalist popular during Depression of 1930s
Introduction to Farrell
Studs Lonigan: A Trilogy (1935): life on the South Side streets of Chicago
Faulkner, William (1897-1962): greatest American novelist, innovative Modernist (Nobel Prize 1949)
Introduction to Faulkner
Faulkner's myth of the South
390 quotations:
school, family name, relationship with blacks, war, Oxford Miss., uneducated poet, gentleman
farmer, family responsibilities, neighbors, reclusivity, autobiography, Sherwood Anderson,
motivation, aspiration, Paris, the North, the South, Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha County, time,
Virginia, decadent southern traditions, curse of slavery, black civil rights, equality, political fear,
economic fear, compulsory integration, race, morality, God, religion, Christ, Christianity, heaven,
pantheism, nature, Caddy, Lena Grove, Mrs. Compson, Dilsey, Drusilla, Judith Sutpen, gender
equality, women, courtship, love, marriage, sex, illicit sex, rape, determinism, Existentialism,
human nature, endurance, immortality of mankind, art, fiction, books, Twain, Whitman, Henry
James, Dreiser, T. S. Eliot, Joyce, R. P. Warren, Tennessee Williams, Richard Wright, Thomas
Mann, European influences, Freud, ranking American novelists, writing, speed, sentences,
paragraphs, compressing the world, style, words, symbols, The Sound and the Fury, lifting
hearts, characters, Realism, the writer, the American writer, Hemingway, Review of The Old
Man and the Sea, critics, rereading, Hollywood, Clark Gable, Communism, America, money,
government, Postmodernism, Political Correctness, censorship, Postmodern fiction, popular
atheism, the younger generation, alcohol, stature, amazement, wisdom, advice, death,
immortality, on his works.
wit & humor: selections from 3 novels and 2 stories
Modernism
Existentialism
Expressionism
techniques of Faulkner: analysis by 10 critics
The greatly influential Expressionistic style of Faulkner: analysis by 26 critics
23 parodies of Faulkner
Faulkner in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
"Unknown Faulkner" (1979), mostly on Sanctuary, Elizabeth Hardwick
Soldier's Pay (1926), dying pilot returns from WWI: analysis by 4 critics
Mosquitoes (1927), decadent New Orleans artists: analysis by 4 critics
Sartoris (1929), family saga of honor: analysis by 4 critics
The Sound and the Fury (1929), a major Modernist novel of 20th century: analysis by section
50 critics discuss The Sound and the Fury
humor in The Sound and the Fury
"That Evening Sun" (1930), whites ignore impending murder of their black servant: analysis
"A Rose for Emily" (1930), death of perverted genteel tradition: analysis by 23 critics
"Red Leaves" (1930), Indians try to cope with their black slaves: analysis by 2 critics
humor in "Red Leaves"
As I Lay Dying (1930), timeless human family journey to the grave: analysis by 15 critics
As I Lay Dying fictional film adaptation (2006)
humor in As I Lay Dying
"A Justice" (1931), Indians' injustice to their black slaves: analysis by section
humor in "A Justice"
Sanctuary (1931), gangster Popeye (North) rapes Temple (South) with corncob: analysis by 15 critics
"Dry September" (1931), whites lynch innocent black man: analysis by 2 critics
Light in August (1932), pregnant girl contrasted with doomed racist: analysis by 15 critics
"Wash" (1934), fanatical psychology of a prototypical Ku Klux Klansman: analysis by 2 critics
"Raid" (1934), Granny Millard defeats the invading Yankee army: analysis by 2 critics
Absalom, Absalom! (1936), influential complex family saga of southern guilt: analysis by 21 critics
"An Odor of Verbena" (1938), young Bayard declines revenge, changes tradition: analysis by section
The Wild Palms (1939), ironic counterpointing of two "love" stories: analysis by 6 critics
The Hamlet (1940), episodic pastoral of lovers while Flem Snopes prevails: analysis by 11 critics
humor in The Hamlet
"Spotted Horses": commentary by Caroline Gordon
Go Down, Moses (1942), Civil War stories: analysis by 4 critics
The Bear (1942), novella affirming pantheism & redemption: analysis by 15 critics
The Portable Faulkner (1946): review by Robert Penn Warren
Intruder in the Dust (1948), the race problem in the South: analysis by 5 critics
Nobel Prize (1949): Address (1950)
Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1951), National Book Award
A Fable (1954), National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, allegory of Christ-evoking figure in WWI:
analysis by 15 critics
The Town (1957), The Mansion (1959), Snopes trilogy completed: commentary
Faulkner praises Moby-Dick
Faulkner praises James Joyce
Faulkner praises Sherwood Anderson
Faulkner praises Richard Wright
Faulkner praises Hemingway: Review of The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
Faulkner praises Tennessee Williams
50 critics discuss Faulkner
Feminism in American literature: Four Modes
Feminist assaults:
Sexual Politics (1970), Kate Millett: analysis by Irving Howe
"What It Would Be Like If Women Win" (1970), Gloria Steinem, unintentional humor
The Lathe of Heaven (1970), invading space aliens are Feminists!, Ursula LeGuin: analysis
Surfacing (1971), representative Feminist becomes what she hates, Margaret Atwood: analysis
Feminists assault fairy tales: review
Feminists assault Nathaniel Hawthorne: rebuttal
Feminists assault Mark Twain: rebuttal
Feminists assault Henry James: rebuttal
Feminists assault Louisa May Alcott: rebuttal
Feminists assault Edith Wharton: rebuttal
Feminists assault Kate Chopin: rebuttal
Feminists assault Willa Cather: rebuttal
Feminists assault Ernest Hemingway: rebuttal
Feminists assault Katherine Anne Porter: rebuttal
Feminists assault Caroline Gordon: rebuttal
Feminists assault Eudora Welty: rebuttal
Feminists assault Jean Stafford: rebuttal
Feminists assault Flannery O'Connor: rebuttal
Feminists assault Ken Kesey: rebuttal
Feminists assault John Irving: rebuttal
Feminists assault Don DeLillo: rebuttal
Feminists assault Kingsley Amis: reviews
Feminists assault David Mamet: rebuttal
Feminist Political Correctness & backlash: quotations
Feminist censorship since 1985:
Feminist censorship laws
Feminists censor Kingsley Amis
Feminists censor Ernest Hemingway
Feminists censor male writers
Feminists censor criticism of themselves
10 ideas censored as "dangerous" by Feminist AAUW
52 ideas censored by Feminist editors
419 words censored by Feminist editors
Feminist censorship in education: from The Language Police (2003)
Hollister vs Tuttle, et al: federal court ruling against Feminist censorship
Feminist Period of American literature (1970--present):
ORDER OF TOPICS: four modes of feminism, paradigms, literary education, Victorian matriarchy,
rise of Radical Feminism, "A Strange Stirring," "What It Would Be Like If Women Win," Sylvia Plath,
self-destructive "victims," the female "Patriarchy," "ignored" women writers, "excluded" women
writers, canon formation, strong women characters, stereotyping males, fairy tales, Feminist writing
since 1970, hypocrisy, homicidal bigotry, woman as "slave," radical coalition, sexism, double standards,
war on boys, boys commit suicide, war on males, takeover of education, Women's Studies, women
writers oppose Women's Studies, Feminist editors, survey of Feminist criticism, subjective critical
theory, Marxism, Feminazism, polarization, dehumanization, negativity, political standards, censorship,
thought crimes, examples of Feminist literary criticism, Feminists harass Feminist, fascism and
persecution, Feminist religion, "lookism," date rape, sexual harassment, lawsuits, adolescent groupthink,
regression to infantilism, Feminists and science, Feminist decline, writers criticize Feminists.
Fifield, A. J., rejection letter (c.1920s): parody of Gertrude Stein
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1896-1940): wrote The Great Gatsby, most influential model novel of 20th century
Introduction to Fitzgerald
193 quotations:
character, youth, morality, Princeton, "Unreal City," waste land, jazz age, alcohol, breakage,
Zelda, the crack-up, America, the rich, Gatsby, vision, society, happiness, men, sex, romantic
attraction, love, disillusionment, Victorianism, pornography, Modernism, literature, Hemingway,
Thomas Wolfe, theory of writing, motivation, genius, writing, understatement, wit, multiple
viewpoints, Impressionism, Expressionism, autobiographical, drinking and writing,
Existentialism, death.
Impressionism
Modernism
Fitzgerald in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
The lyrical impressionistic style of Fitzgerald: analysis by 5 critics
"Zelda" (1970), Elizabeth Hardwick
This Side of Paradise (1920): analysis by 8 critics
The Beautiful and Damned (1922): analysis by 3 critics
"Winter Dreams" (1922), prepares for Gatsby: analysis by 6 critics
"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" (1922): analysis by 2 critics
The Great Gatsby (1925), most influential model for novelists in the 20th century: analysis by chapter
why Gatsby is great: analysis
50 critics discuss The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby film adaptation (1948), Hollywood glorifies Gatsby: analysis
The Great Gatsby film adaptation (1974), miscasts Daisy: analysis
The Great Gatsby film adaptation (2000), by far the best adaptation: analysis
The Great Gatsby movie exploitation (2013): trash not worth reviewing
"The Rich Boy" (1926): analysis by 5 critics
Tender is the Night (1934), psychiatrist cures wife and she leaves him: analysis by 12 critics
"Babylon Revisited" (1935): analysis by 2 critics
The Last Tycoon (unfinished), Hollywood producer based on Irving Thalberg: analysis by 12 critics
"The Love Song of F. Scott Fitzgerald" (1955), John Abbot Clark: humor
40 critics discuss Fitzgerald
Fletcher, John Gould (1886-1950), one of first Imagist poets
Imagism
"The Skaters" (c.1915): Imagist poem
Selected Poems (1939), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Ford, Richard (1944- ), fiction writer, commonplace Realism
"Reckless People: Richard Ford" (1995): analysis by Elizabeth Hardwick
Postmodernism: Realism
The Sportswriter (1986): analysis
Independence Day (1995), sequel to The Sportswriter, Pulitzer Prize
Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790): icon of the American Dream, one of most quoted Americans
Introduction to Franklin
228 quotations:
liberty, government, national security, war, Indians, laws and lawyers, Socialism, Political
Correctness, fools, honesty, industry, persistence, opportunity, time, money, frugality, debt,
poverty, wealth, true riches, education, self-knowledge, wisdom, writing, skepticism, Deism,
God, character, friends, anger, patience, present yourself, reticence, human nature, vanity,
happiness, reason, argument, woman, flirtation, love, marriage, large family, health, sobriety,
eating, old age, death, national bird, epitaph.
Puritanism
Calvinism
Neoclassicism
humor from "The Silence Dogood Papers" (1722): quotation
Poor Richard's Almanac (1732-57): analysis
"Model of a letter of recommendation of a person you are unacquainted with" (1777): humor
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1789), originates myth of self-made man: analysis
humor from The Autobiography: quotations
"Epitaph for Himself": humor
American tradition of "Highbrow" and "Lowbrow": Edwards & Franklin
"Edwards & Franklin," by Perry Miller
"The Late Benjamin Franklin" (c.1889), by Mark Twain: humor
"Poem for Benjamin Franklin's Birthday" (1926), by Stoddard King: humor
14 critics discuss Franklin
Freeman, Mary Wilkins (1852-1930): model Realist
Realism: local color
Freeman in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
"A Village Singer" (1891), humor: analysis
free verse: historical survey
Freneau, Philip (1752-1832): the major 18th-century American poet
Introduction to Freneau
Neoclassicism
Deism
"The Wild Honey Suckle" (1786), toward Romanticism: analysis
"The Indian Burying-Ground" (1787), sentimental condescension: analysis
"On the Uniformity and Perfection of Nature" (1815), pure Deism: analysis
3 critics discuss Freneau
Frost, Robert (1874-1963): most popular American poet, agrarian pastoralist won 4 Pulitzer Prizes
Introduction to Frost
"Frost in His Letters" (1963), Elizabeth Hardwick
140 quotations:
home, independence, thinking, talking, education, teaching, Modernism, Ezra Pound, women,
love, family, society, pastoralism, Puritanism, working, freedom, liberal, politics, conservatism,
America, collectivism, power, philosophy, religion, Platonism, morality, loneliness, literary
criticism, conviction, death, poets, the poem, poetry, metaphor, style, free verse, writing poetry,
Postmodernism.
Agrarian Pastoralism
Modernism
Frost in literary history
Frost discusses his philosophy
Leftists attack Frost (1930s)
"Mowing" (1913), agrarian pastoralism: analysis by 2 critics
"The Death of the Hired Man" (1914), folk pastoralism: analysis by 2 critics
"After Apple Picking" (1914), Platonic idealism: analysis by 10 critics
"Mending Wall" (1914,1919), both sides tenable: analysis by 9 critics
"The Road Not Taken" (1915,1916), classic very often quoted: analysis by 7 critics
"Birches" (1915), often anthologized: analysis by 9 critics
"The Hill Wife" (1916): analysis by 3 critics
"Fire and Ice" (1920,1923), end of the world: analysis by 4 critics
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (1923), most famous poem: analysis by 16 critics
"A Lone Striker" (1933), individualism, model of metaphors in a poem: analysis by 2 critics
"Two Tramps in Mud-Time" (1934): analysis by 7 critics
"Desert Places" (1936): analysis by 7 critics
"Design" (1936), metaphysical: analysis by 11 critics
"Neither Out Far Nor in Deep" (1936): analysis by 5 critics
"The Gift Outright" (1942): read at inaugural of President John F. Kennedy (1961): analysis by 6
"Departmental" (1949): humor
"Worldly Failure" (1960), Richard Eberhart
"Mr. Frost Goes South to Boston" (1961), parody by Firman Houghton
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1962)
"Robert Frost" (1969), Robert Lowell
"At the Robert Frost Memorial" (1982), William Stafford
"Double Dialogue: Homage to Robert Frost" (1994), Muriel Rukeyser
"Apparently Someone in the Department" (2004), anti-PC defense of Frost by George Drew
"Remembering Frost at Kennedy's Inauguration" (2004), Linda Pastan
50 critics discuss Frost
Fuller, Margaret (1810-1850): prototype of Transcendental Feminist, greatly influential
Introduction to Fuller
"The Genius of Margaret Fuller" (1986), Elizabeth Hardwick
25 quotations:
aspiration, education, art, literary criticism, honesty, God, masculine and feminine, man, woman,
love, homelife, evolution, Transcendental Feminism, liberation of women, equal opportunity,
one third of each gender switch roles, moderation, independence, marriage, woman as queen.
New England Transcendentalism
Feminism in American literature: Four Modes
"A Transcendental Conversation" (1841), led by Fuller
The Dial (1840-44): The Editors to the Reader [Emerson & Fuller]
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), Fuller's major work: excerpts
Woman in the Nineteenth Century: commentary by Poe (1846)
Hawthorne refers to Fuller with sympathy (1846)
James Russell Lowell satirizes Fuller as Miranda (1848)
11 critics discuss Fuller
Fuller, Roy (1912-1991), "The Love Song of J. Omar Khayyam" (1973): parody of T. S. Eliot
Gaddis, William (1922-1998), Postmodern Academic Expressionism--long, obscure, but witty
Introduction to Gaddis
Postmodernism
Countercultural Fiction: clever but nihilistic and likely tedious for most readers
The Recognitions (1955), varieties of counterfeiting, very layered: analysis by 4 critics
JR (1975), sixth-grader makes millions by mail and telephone—little texture, mostly talk,
National Book Award: analysis by 2 critics
Carpenter's Gothic (1985): commentary
A Frolic of His Own (1994), National Book Award
Gaines, Ernest J. (1933-2019), The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971): commentary
Ethnic Fiction
Garry, Patrick, In the Shadow of War (2006), traditional values in Postmodernist age: review
Saving Faith (2007): review
Ginsberg, Allen (1926-1997), "Howl" (1955); parody of: "Squeal" (1957), Louis Simpson
God, belief in
God in The Road (1985) by Cormac McCarthy: analysis by 4 critics
Godey's Lady's Book (1830-1898): most popular American magazine before 1850
Victorianism
Goldwyn, Samuel (1879-1974), movie producer: 48 unintentionally humorous quotations
Gordon, Caroline (1895-1981): major novelist, story writer, educator and New Critic
Introduction to Gordon
585 quotations:
family, mother, obligation, rejecting death, human nature, youth, education, college, the South,
Benfolly, Allen Tate, marital issues, fear of women, infidelities, Jungian analysis, separations,
divorcing, daughter, love, women, domestic life, social relations, Agrarianism, poverty, teaching,
readers, how to read a novel, archetypal reality, myth, tragedy, the hero, the artist, religious art,
Christ-evoking heroes, the novel, technique, viewpoint, central intelligence, complication and
resolution, tone, style, Impressionism, Expressionism, naturalism & symbolism, New Criticism,
early masters, Henry James, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, William
Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, other Modernists, other contemporaries, short stories, writing
novels, critics, editors & publishing, Postmodernism, Communism, Feminism, Political
Correctness, homosexuality & fiction, self-criticism, religious faith, spirits, unfinished double
novel, pilgrim's progress, old age, nothingness, Hell, death, God, immortality.
wit & humor: 42 quotations
Modernism
The style of Gordon: analysis by 25 critics
Feminists assault Gordon: rebuttal
The House of Fiction (1950,60), anthology & commentaries with Allen Tate: analysis by 14 critics
4 of Gordon's commentaries:
"Young Goodman Brown," Nathaniel Hawthorne: commentary
"The Open Boat," Stephen Crane: commentary
"Spotted Horses," William Faulkner: commentary
"On Truman Capote and Flannery O'Connor: commentary
How to Read a Novel (1957), objective New Criticism as practiced by Gordon: excerpts
How to Read a Novel: analysis by 15 critics
"The Four Methods of Narration and Other Techniques," by Gordon and Tate
"Faults of the Amateur Fiction Writer," by Gordon
"Summer Dust" (1929), imaginative girl recoils from reality of evil: analysis by 8 critics
"The Long Day" (1930), black woman slits her own throat: analysis by 6 critics
"The Ice House" (1931), post-Civil War horror and irony: analysis by 8 critics
"Mr. Powers" (1931), poor Southern tenant accidentally kills his son: analysis by 7 critics
Penhally (1931), family saga on plantation as metaphor of the Old South: analysis by 19 critics
"The Captive" (1932), young white woman settler captured by Indians: analysis by 13 critics
"The Captive" in the genre of Indian Captivity Narratives
"Tom Rivers" (1933), hero goes out West to escape matriarchy: analysis by 7 critics
"Old Red" (1933), Aleck Maury feels like hunted fox: analysis by 10 critics
Aleck Maury, Sportsman (1934), classics professor lives like Thoreau : analysis by 20 critics
"To Thy Chamber Window, Sweet" (1934), Aleck chooses fish over female: analysis by 4 critics
"The Last Day in the Field" (1935), Aleck's last hunt: analysis by 8 critics
"One More Time" (1935), Aleck chooses life over suicide: analysis by 6 critics
"The Brilliant Leaves" (1937), adventurous girl falls for immature boy: analysis by 7 critics
None Shall Look Back (1937), great novel: Civil War defeat of heroic South: analysis by 33 critics
None Shall Look Back a greater achievement than The Red Badge: detailed analysis by chapter
The Garden of Adonis (1937), love among landowners and tenants: analysis by 16 critics
"The Enemies" (1938), black man pursues wife's killer into the afterlife: analysis by 5 critics
"Her Quaint Honor" (1939), white planter pays for defending black woman: analysis by 5 critics
Green Centuries (1941), white settlers fight Cherokees and Redcoats: analysis by 21 critics
The Women on the Porch (1944), modern gender relations & marriage: analysis by 21 critics
"All Lovers Love the Spring" (1944), loving spinster transcends lack of lover: analysis by 6 critics
"The Forest of the South" (1944), Union officer must marry insane Southerner: analysis by 6 critics
"The Burning Eyes" (1945), boy learns meaning of Nature on possum hunt: analysis by 2 critics
"The Olive Garden" (1945), mournful poet regains his spirit after WWII: analysis by 6 critics
"Hear the Nightingale Sing" (1945), southern girl defends pet mule in Civil War: analysis by 7 critics
The Forest of the South (1945), first story collection: analysis by 16 critics
"The Petrified Woman" (1947), metaphor of Feminism: analysis by 6 critics
"The Presence" (1948), Aleck Maury saves his soul: analysis by 9 critics
The Strange Children (1951), little girl sees more than intellectual parents do: analysis by 32 critics
"Emmanuele! Emmanuele!" (1954), Postmodern writer (Gide) worships himself: analysis by 6 critics
The Malefactors (1956), the best American novel of religious conversion: analysis by 23 critics
"One against Thebes" (1961), girl rejects fantasy, accepts reality: analysis by 6 critics
Old Red and Other Stories (1963): analysis by 10 critics
"Cock-Crow" (1965): analysis by 4 critics
The Glory of Hera (1972), Greek myth of Heracles prefigures Christ: analysis by 15 critics
The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon (1981, 1999): Introduction by Robert Penn Warren
cartoon of Gordon and Allen Tate
50 critics discuss Gordon
Gothicism
Gunn, Thom (1927-2004), "To Yvor Winters" (1955)
Guthrie, A. B. (1901-1991), The Big Sky (1947), mountain men of the frontier West: commentary
The Way West (1950), sequel to The Big Sky, Pulitzer Prize
Hall, Donald (1928-2018), "The Impossible Marriage"--Dickinson & Whitman (1986): humor
Hardwick, Elizabeth (1916-2007), major essayist, critic, fiction writer, co-founder NYRB
Introduction to Hardwick
450 quotations:
family, education, personal, America, money, New York, Jewish culture, Robert Lowell,
once a radical, the Civil Rights movement, riots and revolution, politicians, reading, art,
fiction, technique, literary analysis, major fiction, writers, ideas, moral complexity, memory,
writing, her own fiction, Impressionism, characterizations, landscape, sensations, equality,
sex, love, marriage, Victorianism, gender, women's liberation, Feminist consciousness,
women's writing, publishing, critics and reviewers, religion, disbelief, salvation, death.
wit & humor: 160 quotations
Modernism
Existentialism
Hardwick on writing: quotations
The style of Hardwick: analysis by 4 critics
The Ghostly Lover (1945), prototypical young feminist versus love: analysis by 4 critics
"The Subjection of Women" (1953), influential essay, not PC: scholarship
The Simple Truth (1955), multiple viewpoints on sexual assault murder trial: analysis by 4 critics
Afterword to The Simple Truth: by Hardwick (1986)
"The Decline of Book Reviewing" (1959), essay that influenced the establishment
"Mary McCarthy" (1961), essay
"Eugene O'Neill: A Sketch" (1962), essay
"Frost in His Letters" (1963), essay
"Reflections on Fiction" (1969), essay
"Zelda" (1970), essay
"Sylvia Plath" (c.1972), essay
"Seduction and Betrayal" (1972), influential essay
Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature (1975), not the Feminist line
Sleepless Nights (1979), novel with style: admirable feminist succeeds in NY: analysis in detail
Sleepless Nights: analysis by 16 critics
Sleepless Nights: review by Joan Didion
Sleepless Nights: biographical analysis in relation to poet Robert Lowell
"Unknown Faulkner" (1979), essay
"Nabokov: Master Class" (1980), essay
"Bartleby in Manhattan" (1981), essay
"Katherine Anne Porter" (1982), essay
"The Fate of the Gifted: Djuna Barnes" (1983), essay
"The Magical Prose of Poets: Elizabeth Bishop" (1984), essay
"Sons of the City's Pavements: Delmore Schwartz" (1984), essay
"The Genius of Margaret Fuller" (1986), essay
"Gertrude Stein" (1987), essay
"The Fictions of America" (1987), essay
"Mrs. Wharton in New York" (1988), essay
"Citizen Updike" (1989), essay
"On Washington Square" (1990), essay
"Reckless People: Richard Ford" (1995), essay
"In the Wasteland: Joan Didion (1997), essay
"Mary McCarthy in New York" (1997), essay
"Paradise Lost: Philip Roth" (1997), essay
"Melville in Love" (2000), essay
"The Torrents of Wolfe" (2000), essay
"The Foster Father: Henry James (2001), essay
"Funny as a Crutch: Nathanael West" (2003), essay
The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick (2010): Introduction by Darryl Pinckney
The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick: review
The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick (2017): review
Memorial tribute by Derek Walcott, New York Times Review of Books (2007)
Harte, Bret (1836-1902), "Tennessee's Partner" (1871): analysis of humor
wit and humor: "Muck-a-Muck" (1867): parody of Cooper
"Tennessee's Partner" (1870), prospectors out West: analysis of humor
Harte in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
Hawkes, John (1925-1998), experimental fiction writer
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Second Skin (1964): analysis
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864): major figure in world literature, Christian allegorist
Introduction to Hawthorne
25 major themes in Hawthorne
chronology of publications
193 quotations:
veils, becoming an author, artist of the beautiful, predestination, faith, doubts, theology,
miracles, other states of being, ghosts, Platonic idealism, Nature, animals, human nature,
freedom in wilderness, sweet society, Victorianism, romantic love, sexual desire, purity,
mature love, domestic bliss, holy hearth, Angel in the House, head and heart psychology,
lack of heart, spiritual death, Unpardonable Sin, the unconscious, conscience, sin, guilt,
repression, sublimation, displacement, psychosomatic illness, madness, Democracy,
black inequality, brotherhood, Socialism, progress, evolution, reformers, radical Feminists,
Zenobia, Margaret Fuller, women's movement, gender equality, ministers should be
women, Transcendentalists, happiness, art, allegories, history, writing about America,
the Puritans, Melville, death, immortality, from Prefaces.
allegory
Romanticism
Victorianism
Feminism in American literature
Feminists assault Hawthorne: rebuttal
Hawthorne in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
The style of Hawthorne: analysis by 29 critics
"The Maypole of Merry Mount" (1836), most comprehensive tale: analysis
"The Gentle Boy" (1832), Puritans vs Quakers, theme of balancing head and heart: analysis
"Young Goodman Brown" (1835), Calvinist doctrine of total depravity is hell: analysis
"Young Goodman Brown": commentary by Caroline Gordon
"Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832), first individuation to salvation theme in Amer lit: analysis
"The Minister's Black Veil" (1836), anti-Calvinist vision: analysis
"Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales" (1842): review by Poe quoted
The Birthmark (1843), science & perfectionism can kill you: analysis
"Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844), poisonous Eden of modern world: analysis
Rappaccini's Daughter: fictional film adaptation (2004)
"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844), individuation of artist: analysis
"The Old Manse" (1846), autobiography of Victorian idealist: analysis
anonymous review by Hawthorne of Melville's Typee (1846)
"Main Street" (1849), allegory of New England history: analysis
conceiving The Scarlet Letter (1832-47): quotations
"Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850): review by Melville quoted
The Scarlet Letter (1850): concise analysis
The Scarlet Letter: analysis by chapter
50 critics discuss The Scarlet Letter
The House of the Seven Gables (1851), American history allegorized: analysis
The Blithedale Romance (1852), allegory satirizing Utopianism: analysis censored by Feminists
Blithedale (2005): fictional film adaptation
The Marble Faun (1860), Fall of Man & young American artists in Italy: analysis
The Marble Faun: review by James Russell Lowell (1860)
"On Visiting the Graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau" (1886), Jones Very
Hawthorne: Calvin's Ironic Stepchild (1986): negative review with overview of Hawthorne
50 critics discuss Hawthorne
Hecht, Anthony (1923-2004), "Samuel Sewall" (1954): poem rendering the Puritan judge who apologized
Hecht, Ben (1915-1964): top screenwriter in Hollywood also wrote many literary stories
28 quotations:
Hollywood, movies, producers, writing in Hollywood, rich and poor, newspapers, human illusion,
the Internet, wisdom, love, modesty, God.
Heller, Joseph (1923-1999), one-trick pony: absurdist black humor
Introduction to Heller
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Catch-22 (1961), influential cynical humor, filmed--WWII was insane: analysis by 8 critics
Something Happened (1974), Bob Slo-cum feels guilty for death of son, is repetitive and boring
Good as Gold (1979), conventional, witty Jewish experience comparable to Philip Roth
God Knows (1984), rewrites the Bible--the "real" life of a falsified King David of Israel
Hemingway, Ernest (1899-1961): most popular 20th century literary writer (Nobel Prize 1954)
Introduction to Hemingway
public image of Hemingway: 2 critics discuss
Feminists assault, stereotype and censor Hemingway: rebuttal
"Hemingwarp": analysis of false stereotype
280 quotations:
youth, pain, escapes, WWI, wounds, disappointing first love, war, Paris, determinism and free
will, Existentialism, Christianity, credo, grace under pressure, women, love, generosity, loyalty,
politics, literary politics, Communism, revolution, America, American literature, Lincoln, Twain,
John O'Hara, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Ezra Pound, e.e. cummings, T.S. Eliot, James Joyce,
influences, Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Wilder and Dos Passos, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Turgenieff,
Tolstoi, Chekov, Thomas Mann and Sinclair Lewis, aspiration, learning to write, creative
continuity, rejection, economy, simplicity, purity, poetry, objective correlative, iceberg principle,
similes, symbolism, examples of natural symbols, clarity, Realism, vicarious experience,
Expressionism, convention, bullfight metaphor of aesthetics, good writing, advice to writers,
live intensely, listen and observe, solitude, talent and discipline, revision, slang, dictionary,
knowledge, shit detector, audience, popularity, Hollywood, movie adaptations of his works,
The Old Man and the Sea, writers who teach, critics, Postmodernism, old age, declining health,
summation, death, heaven, immortality, desecration.
wit & humor: from The Sun Also Rises
Neoclassicism
Realism
Modernism
Existentialism
iceberg principle
objective correlative
Hemingway in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
The style of Hemingway, the most influential style in history: analysis by 28 critics
23 parodies of Hemingway
"Up in Michigan" (1921), raped girl is graceful under pressure: analysis
"Up in Michigan" fictional film adaptation
In Our Time (1925): general analysis by 6 critics
"On the Quai at Smyrna," massacre of Greeks by Turks: analysis by 3 critics
"Indian Camp," white doc callous toward son and Indian mother giving birth: analysis
"Indian Camp" fictional film adaptation
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife," suicidal doc unhappily married: analysis by 5 critics
"The End of Something," girl with grace under pressure vs immature boyfriend: analysis
"The Three-Day Blow," immature boy regrets dropping girlfriend: analysis by 3 critics
"The Battler," punch drunk boxer now an exploited hobo: analysis by 2 critics
"A Very Short Story," autobiographical basis for A Farewell to Arms: analysis by 4 critics
"Soldier's Home," perhaps the best war vet story ever written: analysis
"The Revolutionist," anti-Communist: analysis by 2 critics
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot": analysis by 4 critics
"Cat in the Rain," ambivalent modern woman trying to be independent: analysis
"Cat in the Rain" fictional film adaptation
"Out of Season": analysis by 4 critics
"Cross-Country Snow": analysis by 4 critics
"My Old Man," boy learns father is dishonest: analysis by 4 critics
"Big Two-Hearted River," fishing therapy for vet a classic in anthologies: analysis
10 critics discuss "Big Two-Hearted River"
"L'Envoi": analysis
The Sun Also Rises (1926), Modernist classic, the lost generation after WWI: analysis by chapter
12 quotations of Hemingway about The Sun Also Rises
25 critics discuss The Sun Also Rises
NBC television miniseries (1984), unfaithful to the novel: see "Hemingwarp" (2000)
"Alpine Idyll" (1926): analysis
"The Killers" (1927), hit men in a diner in Hem's most influential style: analysis
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927), woman considering abortion fights man's bull: analysis
"Hills Like White Elephants" fictional film adaptation
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1927), classic Existentialism: analysis
10 critics discuss "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" fictional film adaptation
"Ten Indians" (1927): analysis
"Sing a Song of Critics" (1927), satirical poem by Hemingway
A Farewell to Arms (1929), tragic WWI love story in Italy: analysis by 21 critics
A Farewell to Arms, film adaptation (1932), Gary Cooper & overacting Helen Hayes
A Farewell to Arms, film adaptation by Ben Hecht (1957), spoiled by David O. Selznik
"The Sea Change" (1931): analysis
"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933), trying to escape nada: analysis
"The Light of the World" (1933): analysis
"Wine of Wyoming" (1933): analysis
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936), safari sex triangle: analysis by 8 critics
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936), writer dying of rot among the rich: analysis by 2 critics
"The Capital of the World" (1936): analysis
To Have and Have Not (1937), smuggling out of Cuba--class conflict: analysis by 10 critics
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), American in Spanish Civil War: analysis by 13 critics
For Whom the Bell Tolls, film adaptation by Dudley Nichols (1943): analysis
Hemingway liberates the Left Bank in Paris (1944): true WWII action
Across the River and into the Trees (1950), WWII vet dying in Venice: analysis by 9 critics
The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the soul of Hemingway, Pulitzer Prize: analysis in detail
Review of The Old Man and the Sea by William Faulkner (1952)
15 critics discuss The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea, poor film adaptation by Peter Viertel (1958): review
Islands in the Stream (1970), adventures in the Caribbean: analysis by 3 critics
The Garden of Eden in censored edition (1986): analysis by 10 critics
Feminists censor and rewrite The Garden of Eden: analysis
African Betrayal, from The Garden of Eden: analysis by 5 critics
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987): review
Women in Hemingway: fictional film adaptations of "Up in Michigan," "Indian Camp," "A Clean,
Well-Lighted Place," "Cat in the Rain," "Hills Like White Elephants," from Follywood (2005)
50 critics discuss Hemingway
Henry, O. (William Sydney Porter) (1862-1910), formulaic story writer dominated market
Introduction to O. Henry
26 quotations of O. Henry
wit & humor: "Blue Blotch of Cowardice" (1896): parody of Stephen Crane
O. Henry in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
Henry, Patrick (1736-1799), "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" (1775)
Hersey, John (1914-1993), journalistic fiction writer
A Bell for Adano (1944), World War II in Italy, Pulitzer Prize
Hiroshima (1946)
Hijuelas, Oscar ( 1951-2013), distinguished Cuban-American writer on Latino immigrant assimilation
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989), Pulitzer Prize, film
Hoffenstein, Samuel (1890-1947), "Miss Millay Says Something Too" (1928): parody
Hollister, Michael (1938- ), novelist
"Jonathan Edwards" (2004): fictional comic biopic
"Modern Chivalry" (2004): fictional film adaptation of Hugh Brackenridge
"Wieland" (2004): fictional film adaptation of Charles Brockden Brown
"Blithedale" (2005): fictional film adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Pierre" (2005): fictional film adaptation of Herman Melville
"The Monster" (2005): fictional film adaptation of Stephen Crane
"Women in Hemingway" (2005): fictional film adaptations of 5 stories
"As I Lay Dying" (2006): fictional film adaptation of William Faulkner
"Feminist Professors Rule," from Hollyworld (2006): autobiographical
"Pinchy Ciphering" (2009): satire of Thomas Pynchon
"Barthelbe Brothers Mortuary" (2009): satire of Donald & Frederick Barthelme
AmerLit.com
Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894): Boston Brahmin, Neoclassical poet and wit
Introduction to Holmes
78 quotations:
autobiographical, pursuit of truth, freedom, iconoclasm, courage, Puritan heritage, pastoralism
balancing puritanism, friendship, common sense, love, woman, education, wisdom, genius,
language, verse, puns, inner music, fame, critics, old age, death.
Neoclassicism
"Old Ironsides" (1830): commentary
"The Deacon's Masterpiece" (1858): satirizes collapse of Calvinism
"The Chambered Nautilus," symbol of individuation (1858): commentary
Houghton, Firman (1920-1985), "Mr. Frost Goes South to Boston" (1961): parody
Howells, William Dean (1837-1920): genteel leader of the Realist movement
Introduction to Howells
83 quotations:
autobiographical, slavery, idealism, books, suffering, disillusionment, utilitarianism, Socialism,
Puritanism, Victorianism, gentility, rebellion of a Realist, women, literature, Romantic literature,
Jane Austen, Naturalism, Turgeniev, American literature, Realism, Realism vs Romance, Nature,
human nature, real life, the commonplace, religion, death, advice.
Neoclassicism
Victorianism
Realism
The Rise of Silas Lapham (1884): analysis by 12 critics
Hughes, Langston (1902-1967), prolific legendary black poet, fiction writer, playwright, historian,
biographer, translator, editor, role model--major influence on later black writers
Introduction to Hughes
"Florida Road Workers" (1927), transcendental poem: analysis
I Wonder as I Wander (1956), autobiographical account of his life in the 1930s
Hurston, Zora Neale (1903?-1960), most important black female writer in Harlem Renaissance
Introduction to Hurston
Ethnic fiction
Realism
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), her best novel, woman's life struggle through three marriages
Hutchinson, Anne (1591-1643), rebel in Puritan settlement was Hawthorne's model for Hester Prynne
Introduction to Hutchinson
"The trial of Anne Hutchinson," Perry Miller
Journal of John Winthrop (1636-38): on the trial
iceberg principle
Imagism
Imagism: "Rules," Preface to Some Imagist Poets (1915), Amy Lowell
Imagist poetry: 9 poems
Impressionism
individuation
Ionesco, Eugene (French) (1909-1994), The Lesson (1954), absurdist Postmodernist play: analysis
irony
Irving, John (1942- ): popular liberal novelist and most famous satirist of radical Feminism
Introduction to Irving
"Why John Irving Is So Popular" (1982), Joseph Epstein
102 quotations:
missing father, family, Freud, wrestling, education to writing, comic novels, popular culture,
Postmodernism, Postmodern fiction, Feminism, radical Feminism, Feminist writing, Political
Correctness, Marxism, literature, American literature, memory, preparing to write, writing,
his novels, critics.
Postmodernism: Realism
Feminism in American literature
The Feminist Period (1970-present)
Feminists assault Irving, critics cower
The World According to Garp (1978), National Book Award, sensationally popular satire
of radical Feminism: analysis
humor from Garp (sounds like vomiting)
9 liberal critics discuss Garp without acknowledging satire of Feminism (liberal media)
The Hotel New Hampshire (1981), liberal family saga set in Vienna: analysis by 3 critics
The Cider House Rules (1985), liberal argument for morality of abortion: analysis by 2 critics
A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989): analysis by 2 critics
12 critics discuss Irving
Irving, Washington (1783-1859): elegant Victorian stylist wrote two world classic stories
Introduction to Irving
67 quotations of Washington Irving:
character, common people, law, acting, Europe, women, Victorianism, marriage, Angel in the
House, hippie in the hills, pastoralism, books, literature, writing, wit and humor, Ichabod Crane,
Indians, blacks, history, uncertainty, change, most recurrent theme, old age, death.
pastoralisms
Romanticism
Victorianism
Irving in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
humor from A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty
(1809): Europeans, Indians & Lunatics
"Rip Van Winkle" (1819), archetypal male escapism: analysis
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1819), Ichabod Crane the comical academic: analysis
"The Wife" (1819), model of Victorianism: analysis
4 critics discuss Irving
Jackson, Shirley (1919-1965), "The Lottery" (1949), world classic: analysis
allegory
James, Clive (Australian) (1939-2019), from "Robert Lowell's Notebook" (1986): parody
"Richard Wilbur's Faberge Egg Factory" (1986): parody
James, Henry (1843-1916): supremely influential Realist in world literature
Introduction to James
"The Foster Father: Henry James" (2001), Elizabeth Hardwick
140 quotations:
life, defining himself, unmarried, success, money, idealistic teacher, England, America,
Civil War, human nature, values, manners, society, women, American women, New Woman,
reformers, art, interest, objectivity, organic form, experimentalism, style, irony, solidity of
specification, character, dramatization, comic muddlement, complications, closure, perfection,
Realism, real and romantic, moral sense, experience, sensibility, Impressionism, Expressionism,
gentility, criticism, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe, Fuller, Emerson, drama, Live!, death.
Realism
Impressionism
Modernism
"The Art of Fiction" (1884), by James: quotations
James in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
The complex analytical style of James: analysis by 9 critics
5 parodies of James
Daisy Miller (1879), most popular work, Daisy as "the American girl": analysis by chapter
Washington Square (1880): analysis by Elizabeth Hardwick
Washington Square, film adaptation The Heiress (1949): review
Washington Square, best film adaptation, theme of renunciation (1997): review
The Portrait of a Lady (1881), liberated American girl abroad makes choices: analysis by 16 critics
The Bostonians (1886), satire of radical Feminism booed in Boston: analysis by 12 critics
The Bostonians film adaptation by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1984): commentary
humor from The Bostonians: "Portrait of a Bluestocking"
The Turn of the Screw (1898), classic ghost story: analysis by 20 critics
The Turn of the Screw, "The Foster Father: Henry James" (2001), Elizabeth Hardwick
The Wings of the Dove (1902), seeking transcendence: analysis by 10 critics
"The Beast in the Jungle" (1903), live while you can: analysis by chapter
"The Beast in the Jungle": commentary by Allen Tate
The Ambassadors (1903), best in major phase: analysis by 12 critics
"Style in The Ambassadors," analysis by Ian Watt
"An Error in The Ambassadors," by Yvor Winters
The Golden Bowl (1904): analysis by 6 critics
"The Jolly Corner" (1908), paranormal encounter: analysis by 12 critics
Edith Wharton describes James asking directions
50 critics discuss James
Jarrell, Randall (1914-1965), poet, veteran of WWII
"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" (1948): WW II poem
The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1961), poems, National Book Award
Jeffers, Robinson (1887-1962), "Ocean" (1954), pantheist poem
Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826): President embodies American independence and liberty
Introduction to Jefferson
170 quotations:
autobiographical, liberalism, agrarian pastoralism, education, reason, books, liberty, religious
freedom, newspapers, censorship, political correctness, rebellion, slavery, equality, Democracy,
minority rights, government, money, spending, Socialism, guns, conquest, foreign policy,
enemies, war, friends, religion, character, wisdom, health, Epicurus, happiness, old age,
last words, future of America.
Neoclassicism
Deism
Agrarian Pastoralism
Jefferson's agrarian pastoralism: analysis by 2 critics
The Declaration of American Independence (1776)
from Notes on the State of Virginia (1784-5): quoted
Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909), Victorian New England local colorist
Victorianism
Realism
"A White Heron" (1886), her most praised fiction: analysis
"A White Heron" fictional film adaptation (2005)
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896): analysis by 9 critics
13 critics discuss Jewett
Johnson, Charles (1948- ), black philosophical fiction writer, TV scriptwriter, artist, critic, and editor
Introduction to Johnson
Ethnic Fiction
Realism
Faith and the Good Thing (1974), novel in oral tradition of folk fable
Oxherding Tale (1982), novel as dramatic monologue
"Exchange Value" (1982), highly acclaimed short story
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1986), collection of short fiction
Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970 (1988), new directions
Middle Passage (1989), novel on the slave trade, National Book Award
Johnson, Denis (1949-2017), Tree of Smoke (2006), Vietnam War, poetic style, National Book Award
Jones, James (1921-1997), WWII vet, military novelist, sex and violence, some good characterization
Introduction to Jones
Naturalism
From Here to Eternity (1951), WWII novel set in Hawaii, National Book Award, was filmed:
analysis by 4 critics
The Pistol (1959), shortest, most artful novel, set in Hawaii at outbreak of war like Eternity
The Thin Red Line (1962), combat on Guadalcanal, same characters as Eternity but renamed
Whistle (1978), last in trilogy of war novels
Joyce, James (Irish) (1882-1941), most influential experimental Modernist fiction writer of 20th century
Modernism
Postmodernism
stream of consciousness
Dubliners (1914):
"Clay": analysis
"The Dead" (1914): commentary by Allen Tate
"The Dead" film adaptation by John Huston and son (1987): commentary
Ulysses (1922): commentary by 10 critics
"The Waste Land" (1925), parody of T. S. Eliot by Joyce with commentary
Kantor, MacKinlay (1904-1977), journalist and fiction writer, Andersonville (1955), Pulitzer Prize
Kelly, Fanny (1845-1904), "Introductory," My Captivity among the Sioux Indians (1871)
Introduction to Fanny Kelly by Jules Zanger
Indian captivity narratives
Kennedy, John F. (1917-1963): inspirational U.S. President: 35 quotations
Kennedy, William (1928- ), Naturalistic fiction writer, Ironweed (1983), Pulitzer Prize
Kennedy, X. J. (1929- ), "Emily Dickinson Leaves a Message to the World Now That Her Homestead in
Amherst Has an Answering Machine" (1992): humor
Kerouac, Jack (1922-1969): rebel Beatnik counterculture hero
Introduction to Kerouac
129 quotations:
society, freedom, education, Existentialism, self-criticism, madness, Beat Generation,
love, sex, women, the Road, Los Angeles, Times Square, America, pastoralism, Buddhism,
Transcendentalism, dreaming, God, writing, style, critics, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein,
Thomas Wolfe, 1960s countercultural revolution, Postmodernism, politics, summary
of beliefs, advice, death.
Beat Generation
Hip Pastoralism
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
On the Road (1958): analysis
"On the Sidewalk" (1959), by John Updike: parody
13 critics discuss Kerouac
Kesey, Ken (1935-2001), iconic hipster, 1960s counterculture libertarian
Introduction to Kesey
Hip Pastoralism
Merry Pranksters
Postmodernism: 1960s Countercultural Fiction
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), free spirit versus The Combine: analysis by 15 critics
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, popular film adaptation by Hauben & Goldman (1975): analysis
Sometimes a Great Notion (1964), conflict of brother loggers (brawn and brains): analysis by 2
Sometimes a Great Notion, film adaptation (1971)
"The RPM" (1973): parody of Kesey by Jack F. McComb
King, Jr., Martin Luther (1929-1968): greatest black leader and orator of 20th century
"The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King" (1968), Elizabeth Hardwick
87 quotations:
education, war, leadership, obligation to speak out, brotherhood, nonviolent protest, peace,
law and order, race, hate, revenge, fear and guilt, integration, character, human nature,
virtues, Postmodernism, Communism, infinite hope, from "I Have a Dream," death.
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (1963): analysis
"I Have a Dream" (1963): analysis
The style of Martin Luther King: analysis by 9 critics
King, Stoddard, "Poem for Benjamin Franklin's Birthday: (1926): wit
Kingston, Maxine Hong (1940- ), the major Chinese-American writer
Introduction to Kingston
Ethnic Fiction
The Woman Warrior (1976), life of Chinese-American girl: analysis by 21 critics
China Men (1980), National Book Award: analysis by 6 critics
Tripmaster Monkey (1989): analysis by 4 critics
Kinnell, Galway (1927-2014), "For William Carlos Williams" (1960)
"The Deconstruction of Emily Dickinson" (1994)
Knox, Ronald (1888-1957), "Battology" (1927): parody of Gertrude Stein
Koch, Kenneth (1925-2002), "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" (2005): parody
Kosinski, Jerzy (1933-1991), controversial Polish refugee from Nazis taught himself English,
published nihilistic novels, became a decadent celebrity, committed suicide
Introduction to Kosinski
Minimalism
Gothicism
Naturalism
Postmodernism
The Painted Bird (1965), wandering Jewish boy endures WWII horror, understated
Steps (1968), alienation, violence, emptiness, National Book Award
Being There (1970), short comic novel, minimalist Postmodernism--film is funnier: analysis by 2
Kumin, Maxine (1929-2014), contemporary poet
Up Country (1973), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"After the Poetry Reading" (1996): Emily Dickinson reborn
Kunitz, Stanley (1905-2006), Selected Poems 1928-1958, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Lang, Andrew (Scot) (1844-1912), "Brahma": parody of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lardner, Ring (1885-1933), satirical Realist short story writer once very popular for humor and wisecracks;
best stories still anthologized: "Haircut," "The Love Nest," "You Know Me, Al," "The Big Town,"
"The Golden Honeymoon," "Champion"
"Ring Lardner" (1963), Elizabeth Hardwick
Lardner in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
LeGuin, Ursula K. (1929-2018), The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Feminist sci-fi gender warrior welcomes
invasion from outer space to establish female dictatorship on earth: analysis
Feminist Period (1970-present)
Leonard, Larry, Far Walker (1988), long animal fable about lemmings: review
Lesley, Craig, Winterkill (1984), realistic contemporary NW Indian domestic novel: review
Lewis, Sinclair (1885-1951): satirical Realist & Socialist was first American awarded Nobel Prize (1930)
Introduction to Lewis
Realism
Socialism
Main Street (1920), small town middle America satirized: analysis by 10 critics
Babbitt (1922), Midwest booster conformist briefly rebels: analysis by 11 critics
"Speech by George F. Babbitt to the Zenith Real Estate Board," from Babbitt: satire
Arrowsmith (1925), idealistic medical research, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 7 critics
Elmer Gantry (1927), satire of corrupt evangelism: analysis by 2 critics
Dodsworth (1929), American businessman abroad: analysis by 5 critics
It Can't Happen Here (1935), fascist takeover of U.S. government: analysis by 4 critics
"Virga Vay & Allan Cedar" (1945), text: satire
32 critics discuss Lewis
Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865): iconic savior of the Union and best writer among U.S. Presidents
Introduction to Lincoln
55 quotations:
self-deprecating humor, common man, devotion to mother, God, morality, character, self-reliance,
patience, hustle, success, books, tact, positive thinking, equality, slavery, the South, America,
education, opposition to Socialism, politicians, advice, death.
The style of Lincoln, mainly "The Gettysburg Address": analysis by 11 critics
"The Gettysburg Address" (1865): most revered American speech
London, Jack (1876-1916): conflicted Socialist/individualist & world bestseller
Introduction to London
Naturalism
The Call of the Wild (1903), atavistic dog reverts in far North: analysis by 3 critics
The Sea Wolf (1904), Naturalism after Nietzsche: analysis by 4 critics
Martin Eden (1909), sailor gets an education and kills himself like London: analysis by 6 critics
20 critics discuss London
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882): Victorian bard, most beloved American poet of 19th century
Introduction to Longfellow
63 quotations:
aspiration, education, translations, wreck of the Hesperus, young America, urban security,
progress, human nature, health, religion, love, Victorianism, woman, pastoralism, Puritan
heritage, literature, critics, charity, inspiration, sleep, death, last words, immortality.
Victorianism
"A Psalm of Life" (1838): analysis
"The Rainy Day" (1842)
"The Slave's Dream" (1842)
"The Day Is Done" (1844)
"What Hiawatha Probably Did" (1856): parody of Longfellow
Lost Generation (1920s)
Lowell, Amy (1874-1925): Pound called her poetic theory "Amygism"
Imagism
"Meditation" (c.1915): Imagist poem
Rules from the Preface to Some Imagist Poets (1915)
Pulitzer Prize (1926)
Lowell, James Russell (1819-1891): Boston Brahmin, Neoclassical critic and poet
Introduction to Lowell
24 quotations:
slavery, freedom, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Fuller, himself, "Graves of English Soldiers
at Concord," wisdom, old age, Thoreau, Puritanism, Emerson, Transcendentalism,
literary criticism, Genius.
"A Fable for Critics" (1848): critiquing Emerson, Bryant, Hawthorne, Cooper, Fuller, Poe, Irving,
Holmes, and himself
"Margaret Fuller as Minerva" (1848): satire expressing common male view of Fuller
"Review of The Marble Faun" by Hawthorne (1860)
"Moral Mutiny in New England" (1865): recalling the Transcendentalists
Lowell, Robert (1917-1977), autobiographical Postmodernist poet occasionally went insane
"Mr. Edwards and the Spider" (1944): analysis
Lord Weary's Castle (1947), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Skunk Hour" (1959), decadence of New England culture: analysis
"Words for Hart Crane" (1959)
Life Studies (1960), collected poems, National Book Award
"T. S. Eliot" (1969)
"Ezra Pound" (1969)
"Robert Frost" (1969)
The Dolphin (1974), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
from "Robert Lowell's Notebook" (1986), by Clive James: parody
Luce, Clare Boothe (1903-1987): influential wit, dramatist, politician, and diplomat
33 quotations:
autobiographical, men, women, family values, Feminism, politicians, human nature, money,
Postmodernism, Communism.
Lummis, C. F. (1859-1928), "A Poe-em of Passion" (c.1882): parody of Poe
Lytle, Andrew (1902-1995), Southern Agrarian fiction writer, essayist, critic
Agrarian Pastoralism
The Velvet Horn (1957), mythic method, Faulknerian style: analysis
MacLeish, Archibald (1892-1982), poet, dramatist, professor, public servant--three Pulitzer Prizes
Introduction to MacLeish
Modernism
"Ars Poetica" (c.1915): "A poem should not mean / But be."
Conquistador (1932), epic of attempted conquest of Aztecs by the Spanish, Pulitzer Prize
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1952)
Collected Poems (1953), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
J.B. (1958), play based on biblical Job, Pulitzer Prize
Collected Poems, 1917-1982 (1985), Pulitzer Prize
Mailer, Norman (1923-2008), manic rebel hipster & wife-stabber with hyper Expressionist style
Introduction to Mailer
Existentialism
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
The Naked and the Dead (1948), leftist view of WW II in the Pacific: commentary by 5 critics
The Deer Park (1955), turgid prose against the Blacklist in Hollywood: analysis by 5 critics
The Executioner's Song (1979), true account of murderer Gary Gilmore, Pulitzer Prize
12 critics discuss Mailer
Malamud, Bernard (1914-1986), major Kafkaesque short story writer portrays Jew as suffering Humanity
Introduction to Malamud
Ethnic Fiction
The Natural (1952) mythic baseball novel became popular film
The Magic Barrel (1958), story collection, National Book Award
A New Life (1961), leftist academic novel satirizes conservative professors: quotations
"The Jewbird" (1963), one of his best stories
The Fixer (1966), NB Award, Pulitzer Prize: Jew unjustly imprisoned in Tsarist Russia in 1913
The Stories of Bernard Malamud (1983)
Mamet, David (1947- ): best living American playwright
Introduction to Mamet
57 quotations of Mamet:
autobiographical, human nature, women, equality, 1960s counterculture, the avant-garde,
rejects liberalism, big government, reason vs utopianism, abortion, affirmative action, fairness,
free enterprise, no longer "brain-dead," conservatism, America, academics, Postmodernism,
Political Correctness, Hollywood, critic, drama, writing dramas, audience, advice, death.
Postmodernism
Feminist Period (1970-present)
Political Correctness and backlash against it
Oleanna (1992), Feminist fascism in higher education: analysis by act
"Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'" (2008): quotations
March, William (1893-1954), "The Little Wife" (1930), model of Realism: analysis
Realism
March in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
Markham, Edwin (1852-1940), "The Man with a Hoe" (1899): famous poem about class struggle
Marxist professors in American higher education: overall statistics (2007)
Mason, Bobbie Ann (1940- ), Shiloh and Other Stories (1982), authentic Kentucky Realism: review
McCarthy, Cormac (1933- ): major Modernist novelist after Porter, Gordon, O'Connor & Stafford
Introduction to McCarthy
167 quotations:
youth, the West, America, history, morality, pessimism, consolations, stoicism, God, human
nature, savagery, humanity, civilization, determinism, Existentialism, women, sex, beauty,
ladies picnic at the Civil War, unmarried, teaching creative writing, liberals, utopianism,
abortion, fools, war, reality, Postmodernism, drugs, cowardice, bad government, futile politics,
apocalyptic vision, barbarism, truth, literature, Political Correctness, writing, style, old age, death.
Gothicism
Naturalism
Expressionism
Modernism
Postmodernism
pastoralism
The style of Cormac McCarthy: analysis by 4 critics
The Orchard Keeper (1965), eco-lament, Faulkner Foundation Award: analysis by 5 critics
Outer Dark (1968), Jungian allegory of evil "shadow": analysis by 6 critics
Child of God (1974), Platonism and horrific human nature: analysis by 7 critics
Suttree (1979), most autobiographical and complex novel: analysis by 10 critics
Blood Meridian (1985), gory historical western in dazzling style: analysis by 20 critics
All the Pretty Horses (1992), his most popular western, National Book Award: analysis by 12
No Country for Old Men (2005), Postmodern evil prevails, filmed: analysis by 4 critics
The Road (2006), major post-apocalyptic allegory, perhaps his best novel: analysis in detail
The Road: second analysis
God in The Road: analysis by 4 critics
18 critics discuss McCarthy
McCarthy, Mary (1912-1989): satirist, critic, atheist, Marxist, Postmodern fiction writer
Introduction to McCarthy
215 quotations:
girlhood, rebellion, progressive education, Vassar, Neoclassicism, ideas, Existentialism,
Existentialism, writing, teaching, human nature, Americans, Europe, labor, government,
capitalism, radical politics, Marxism, Lillian Hellman, forgiveness, anti-Semitism, sex,
love, marriage, men, women, feminism, triteness, expertise, science, the rich, taste,
morality, religion, God, death
wit & humor: 71 quotations
"Mary McCarthy" (1961), Elizabeth Hardwick
"Mary McCarthy in New York" (1997), Hardwick
The Company She Keeps (1942), her most notable stories: overall analysis by 18 critics
"Cruel and Barbarous Treatment" (1939), satire of female cliches: analysis by 7 critics
"Rogue's Gallery": analysis by 6 critics
"The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt" (1941), scandalous breakout story: analysis by 12 critics
"The Genial Host": analysis by 5 critics
"Portrait of the Intellectual as a Yale Man": analysis by 7 critics
"Ghostly Father, I Confess," woman to psychiatrist replacing God: analysis by 9 critics
The Oasis (1949), Utopian intellectuals commune on mountaintop: analysis by 20 critics
Cast a Cold Eye (1950), collection of minor stories: analysis by 5 critics
The Groves of Academe (1952), Communist novel defaming Richard Nixon by proxy: analysis by 19
A Charmed Life (1955), novel exorcizing ex-husband critic Edmund Wilson: analysis by 13 critics
Venice Observed (1956): intellectual's guidebook
Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957), autobiography of lapsed Catholic: analysis by 12 critics
The Stones of Florence (1959): intellectual's guidebook
On the Contrary (1961), naive anti-Modernist rejection of symbolism: analysis
The Group (1963), vapid Vassar classmates satirized---her big hit: analysis by 23 critics
Birds of America (1965), Leftist views from 1960s, anti-Vietnam War, etc.: analysis by 8 critics
The Writing on the Wall and Other Literary Essays (1970)
Cannibals and Missionaries (1979), terrorists hijack liberals: analysis by 7 critics
Ideas and the Novel (1980), essays rationalizing her fiction: excerpts
The Hounds of Summer and Other Stories (1981), minor stories
"The Appalachian Mountain Revolution," destructive psychiatrists: analysis by 3 critics
Occasional Prose (1985): includes lectures, prefaces, reviews, criticism, obituaries
How I Grew (1987), detailed autobiography: analysis
Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936-1938 (1992), postures of a Trotskyite Marxist: analysis
41 critics discuss McCarthy
McComb, Jack F., "The RPM: (1973): parody of Ken Kesey
McCullers, Carson (1917-1967): sentimentalist sympathetic to southern outsiders & grotesques
Introduction to McCullers
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940): analysis
19 critics discuss McCullers
McElroy, Joseph (1930- ), Plus (1977), disembodied brain in orbit: analysis
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
McGinley, Phyllis (1905-1978), "The Theology of Jonathan Edwards" (1957): witty poem
McGuane, Thomas (1939- ), novelist with oblique plots, compressed, evocative style
Introduction to McGuane
Expressionism
Postmodernism
The Sporting Club (1969), millionaire destroys aristocratic club
The Bushwhacked Piano (1971), picaresque adventures of boy and a mosquito exterminator
Ninety-two in the Shade (1973), sportfishing in Florida comparable to Hemingway
Panama (1978), elusive plot, compressed poetic style, vivid imagery, evocative atmosphere: analysis
Nobody's Angel (1982), relationships on ranches in Montana
Something to Be Desired (1984), turning a ranch into a hot springs health resort
McKay, Claude (1890-1948), ambivalent black poet rejected Communism, became a Catholic
Introduction to McKay
Songs of Jamaica (1912), racial pride in dialect
"The White City" (1922)
"America" (1922)
A Long Way from Home (1937), autobiography
Selected Poetry and Prose, 1912-1948 (1973)
McMurtry, Larry (1936-2021), Lonesome Dove (1985) well written popular Western: recommended
McPherson, James Alan (1943-2016), friendly black Realist transcends race like Martin Luther King
Introduction to McPherson
Hue and Cry (1969), clever title, mostly grim stories set in violent summer of 1968
Elbow Room (1977), best collection, realistic longterm optimism on race relations,
Pulitzer Prize (1978): commentary
MacArthur Foundation Award (1981)
Melville, Herman (1819-1891): giant in world literature wrote Moby-Dick, greatest American novel
Introduction to Melville
216 quotations:
autobiographical, career, "wicked book," allegory, body and soul, wordplay, human nature,
man as a mob, narcissism, multiple points of view, Calvinism, the world, circularity of life,
more dark than light, individualism, interdependence, society, Socialism, woman, women's
rights, gender equality, love, sex, blacks, humanity, Democracy, revolution, America,
westward movement, philosophy, Truth, whale as Truth, transcendent consciousness, balance,
imbalance and inversion, solipsism, revenge, God, Christ, Christ-evoking, Christianity, religion,
faith, virtue, criticism of clergy, agnosticism, Existentialism, Nature, Platonism, pantheism,
determinism and free will, writing, style, Solomon, Dana, Coleridge, Montaigne, Poe, Emerson,
Hawthorne, Shakespeare, critics, Captain Vere, old age, advice, death, afterlife, immortality.
Romanticism
allegory
25 major themes
Romantic style (Moby-Dick), then Neoclassical style (Billy Budd) of Melville: analysis by 35 critics
Melville in the history of philosophy, Herbert W. Schneider
"Melville in Love" (2000) Elizabeth Hardwick
Typee (1846), Adam and Eve were cannibals: analysis by 9 critics
Typee: anonymous review by Hawthorne (1846)
Omoo (1847), civilization spoils Polynesia: analysis by 5 critics
Mardi (1849), elusive allegory of quest for Truth in Pacific islands: analysis by 7 critics
Redburn (1849), boy ships out to sordid Liverpool: analysis by 3 critics
White-Jacket (1850), Navy sailor loses innocence: analysis by 3 critics
"Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1850): quotations from review by Melville
Moby-Dick (1851), the greatest American novel: concise analysis including 30 key metaphors
Moby-Dick and Pym: analysis in depth contrasting egalitarian Melville with racist Poe
50 critics discuss Moby-Dick
21 different interpretations of the white whale
humor from Moby-Dick
excellent film adaptation of Moby-Dick by John Huston (1956): commentary
Pierre (1852), tragedy of idealistic artist who tries to be Christlike: analysis by 7 critics
Pierre: analysis by E. L. Grant Watson (1930)
Pierre: fictional film adaptation, starring Orson Welles (2005)
"The Lightning-Rod Man" (1853), satire of Calvinism: analysis by 3 critics
"Bartleby the Scrivener" (1855), archetypal dropout in New York: analysis by 10 critics
"Bartleby in Manhattan" (1981): analysis by Elizabeth Hardwick
"The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" (1855), gender issues: analysis by 3 critics
Benito Cereno (1855), resonant slave rebellion: analysis by 16 critics
"I and My Chimney" (1856), autobiography of home life and politics: analysis by 2 critics
The Confidence-Man (1857), cons on the steamboat of life: analysis by 8 critics
Billy Budd (1891), Christ-evoking final vision: analysis by chapter
Billy Budd: analysis by E. L. Grant Watson (1933)
Billy Budd: film adaptation by Peter Ustinov (1962): analysis
"Art" (1891): poem by Melville
William Faulkner praises Moby-Dick (1927)
"At Melville's Tomb" (1933), Hart Crane
"Herman Melville" (1933), W. H. Auden
"To a Portrait of Melville in My Library" (1937), Yvor Winters
Herman Melville (1958), Conrad Aiken
50 critics discuss Melville
Mencken, Henry Louis (1880-1956): iconoclast, wit and free speech crusader
Introduction to Mencken
180 quotations:
autobiographical, human nature, men, women, love, men and women, marriage, adultery,
alimony, morality, Jews, lynching in his state, honor, idealism, cynicism, education, justice,
reform, progress, government, Communism, freedom, war, Democracy, politics, newspapers,
judge, art, American literature, writing, criticism, Victorian Political Correctness, adverse
influence of Puritanism, religion, life, old age, last intelligible words, death, epitaph.
"Puritanism as a Literary Force," by Mencken: American literary history as of 1917
Merwin, W. S. (1927-2019), major world class poet & translator wrote 50 books of poetry & prose
Introduction to Merwin
Selected Translations: 1948-1968 (1968): PEN Translation Prize
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1979)
Selected Poems (1988)
metaphor
metaphor of the machine: cybernetic fiction (1960s- )
Metaphors, Model of
metaphysical poetry
Michener, James (1907-1997), prolific journalistic fiction writer
Tales of the South Pacific (1948), Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1892-1950), vamping romantic poet of Greenwich Village in the 1920s
"What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" (1923): analysis
Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (1923), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Miller, Arthur (1915-2005): major Marxist playwright
Introduction to Miller
135 quotations:
outlook, life is a jungle, society, concentration camps, education in drama, motivation, tragedy,
Death of a Salesman, Marxism, false analogy, The Crucible, Communism, membership in the
Party?, disillusionment, U.S. House Committee hearing, disloyalty, indictment, double standard,
treason, America, rejects Socialism, Postmodern drama, popular culture, elitist art, decadent
literature, Political Correctness, spirituality, Marilyn Monroe, the writer, Eugene O'Neill,
Modernists, Postmodern fiction, moral basis of his plays, social reform, writing plays,
writing a hit, creative peak, death of the theater, aesthetics, critics, immortality, death.
Postmodernism: Drama & Hollywood
All My Sons (1947): analysis by 4 critics
Death of a Salesman (1949), his most popular play: analysis by 32 critics
The Crucible (1953), most successful hoax in American literature: analysis by 18 critics
Marxist politics and false analogy in The Crucible: from Follywood (2005)
A View from the Bridge (1955): analysis by 3 critics
12 critics discuss Miller
Minimalism
Modernism
Momaday, N. Scott (1934- ), Kiowa Indian, one of best Native American fiction writers & poets
Introduction to Momaday
House Made of Dawn (1962), Native American classic, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 4 critics
The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969), memoir & mixed genres: analysis by 20 critics
Angle of Geese and Other Poems (1974), what it means to be an Indian in the white world
The Gourd Dancer (1976), the mystery of Nature
Monsour, Leslie (1948- ), "Emily's Words" (1990): homage to Dickinson
Moore, Marianne (1887-1972): objective intellectual Modernist poet, baseball fan in tricorner hat
Introduction to Moore
62 quotations:
character, travel, responding to new poets, Neoclassicism, Modernism, psychology, gender,
human nature, love, highest standards, poetry, writing poetry, Postmodernism, Political
Correctness, critics, transcendence, death.
Neoclassicism
Modernism
"Poetry" (c.1921)
"Critics and Connoisseurs" (1924): analysis
"What Are Years?" (1941): analysis by 2 critics
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1951)
Collected Poems (1952), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Miss Moore at Assembly" (1993): parody by John Updike
24 critics discuss Moore
Morgan, Speer (1946- ), Belle Starr (1979), historical western recommended for authenticity and humor
Morley, Christopher (1890-1957), "Epitaph for Any New Yorker" (1920): humor
Morris, Wright (1910-1998), prolific commonplace Realist of Midwest, representative Americana
Introduction to Morris
The Field of Vision (1956), Realism with bullfight, multiple points of view: analysis by 2 critics
National Book Award
Love Among the Cannibals (1957), his best-selling novel
Ceremony in Lone Tree (1960), sequel to The Field of Vision, perhaps his best
Plains Song, for Female Voices (1980), feminist generational novel, American Book Award
Morrison, Toni (1931-2019): major Afro-centric black novelist (Nobel Prize 1993)
Introduction to Morrison
192 quotations:
autobiographical, black family, black life, jazz, education, urbanity, black folk pastoralism,
Postmodernism, Jews, Afrocentricity, humanism, racism, black power, Political Correctness,
women, white women, black feminists, white feminists, love, writing, Modernism, her works,
critics, other writers, Nobel Prize, advice, Existentialism, transcendence, religion, death.
The style of Morrison: analysis by 12 critics
archetype
Modernism
Ethnic Fiction
The Bluest Eye (1970), destructive racial stereotypes: analysis by 25 critics
Sula (1973), independent black woman becomes pariah: analysis by 25 critics
Song of Solomon (1977), individuation of a young black man: analysis by 21 critics
Review of Song of Solomon by Reynolds Price
Tar Baby (1981), vital blacks versus decadent whites: analysis by 17 critics
Review of Tar Baby by John Irving
Beloved (1987), haunted by the ghost of slavery, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 24 critics
Review of Beloved by Margaret Atwood
Jazz (1992): analysis by 7 critics
Review of Jazz by Edna O'Brien
Paradise (1998): analysis
30 critics discuss Morrison
Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977), aristocratic Russian exile is an aesthete much admired for style,
an intellectual entertainer marginal to the tradition of American literature: Nabokov is a
witty master of language whose belief that art should not contain ideas trivializes his art.
Introduction to Nabokov
"Nabokov: Master Class" (1980), Elizabeth Hardwick
Postmodernism
Lolita (1955), sensational novel of pedophilia satirizing consumerist America made him rich
Pnin (1957), clever Russian emigre college professor like Nabokov plays with language
Pale Fire (1962), complex academic parody features long mad poem by mad poet with mad editor
narrative: "The Four Methods of Narration and other techniques" (1950), Caroline Gordon & Allen Tate
Nash, Ogden (1902-1971), humorous verses (1933-1953): 41 quotations
"Kindly Unhitch That Star, Buddy" (1933): humor
"Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man" (1934): analysis
"The Purist" (c.1938): humor
"I Never Even Suggested It" (1940): humor
Golly, How Truth Will Out (1940): humor
National Association of Scholars "Trigger Warnings Contest" (2014): satire of Political Correctness
Naturalism
Nature in American Literature: 6 perspectives
Naylor, Gloria (1950-1916), The Women of Brewster Place (1982), National Book Award
Neihardt, John (1881-1973), ed., Black Elk Speaks (1932), the major work of American Indian lit: excerpts
Nemerov, Howard (1920-1991), major poet
"Santa Claus" (1960), satire: analysis
"Style" (1967)
Collected Poems (1977), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1981)
Neoclassicism
New Criticism: objective literary analysis
Norris, Frank (1870-1902): major Naturalist--"the boy Zola"
Introduction to Norris
75 quotations:
youth, education, the novel, Realism, Romance, Zola, Naturalism, commercial fiction, McTeague,
ironic Naturalism, discovering Sister Carrie, The Octopus, machine in the garden, Stephen Crane,
Scott, Cooper, Henry James, writing fiction, women writers, censorship, Americans, Manifest
Destiny, The People, a literary canon, distribution of writers, New England literary dominance,
brotherhood of man, transcendent vision, credo:
Naturalism
pastoralism
"The Green Stone of Unrest" (1897): parody of Stephen Crane
McTeague (1899), cartoonlike pure Naturalism set in California: analysis by 17 critics
Greed (1924), film adaptation of McTeague by Erich von Stroheim: analysis by 3 critics
The Octopus (1901), epic of California wheat ranchers vs railroads: analysis by 15 critics
24 critics discuss Norris
novel, rise of
objective correlative
Oates, Joyce Carol (1938- ), anti-American Feminist
Feminism in American literature
Feminist Period (1970-present)
Feminists censor Hemingway's last novel
Naturalism
them (1969), Feminist Naturalism, National Book Award
Black Water (1992), Senator Ted Kennedy as Daisy Buchanan: analysis
O'Brien, Tim (1946- ), Vietnam War vet has naive leftist vision but impressive style & techniques
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Going after Cacciato (1979), escapist anti-Vietnam War novel, National Book Award: analysis by 2
Landing Zone Bravo, from Cacciato, ironic metaphor of the whole Vietnam War: analysis
The Things They Carried (1990), infantry in Vietnam War: analysis
O'Connor, Flannery (1925-1964): one of the 5 greatest American short story writers
Introduction to O'Connor
"Flannery O'Connor," commentary by Elizabeth Hardwick (1983)
330 quotations:
autobiographical, place, education, Hell, the soul, Faith, seeing, God, grace, Catholicism,
the Church, hypocrites, determinism, psychology, humor, morality, Neoclassicism, Christian
Realism, the grotesque, Modernism, writing, audience, criticism, Wise Blood, teaching,
New Criticism, interpretation, Postmodernism, Political Correctness, shrunken Jesus,
moral relativism, envious liberal materialism, Postmodern novels, manners.
on fiction writing: quotations
wit & humor: 52 quotations
Realism
Modernism
Expressionism
The style of O'Connor: analysis by 12 critics
Feminists assault O'Connor: rebuttal
"On Truman Capote and Flannery O'Connor" (1960): commentary by Caroline Gordon
"The Prophets of O'Connor, Percy, and Powers" (1980): analysis
Wise Blood (1952): analysis by chapter
humor from Wise Blood: quotations
commentary on Wise Blood by O'Connor
36 critics discuss Wise Blood
Wise Blood, excellent film adaptation by John Huston (1979): analysis
"The Peacock Roosts" (1953), poem with self-portrait and commentary by O'Connor
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy" (1953), Civil War vet a prop, hilarious: analysis by 9 critics
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1953), major classic of the short story: analysis by 30 critics
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find": analysis by Caroline Gordon
"The River" (1953), neglected child finds salvation in death: analysis by 9 critics
"The Displaced Person" (1954), farm accident morally complex: analysis by 21 critics
"The Artificial Nigger" (1955), rustic whites confront racism in big city: analysis by 20 critics
"Good Country People" (1955), arrogant girl loses her leg to Bible salesman: analysis by 14 critics
"Greenleaf" (1956), surprising revenge of a doomed bull: analysis 13 critics
"The Enduring Chill" (1958), would-be writer makes excuse: analysis by 11 critics
"The Comforts of Home" (1960): analysis by 11 critics
The Violent Bear It Away (1960): analysis in detail
commentary on The Violent Bear It Away by O'Connor
33 critics discuss The Violent Bear It Away
Atheist critics blind to The Violent Bear It Away: rebuttal
"Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1961), brilliant on race relations: analysis by 16 critics
"The Lame Shall Enter First" (1962): analysis by 17 critics
"Revelation" (1964), text: great humor
"Revelation," prejudiced farm woman shocked by her religious vision: analysis by 18 critics
"Flannery O'Connor at Home" (1964): tribute by Katherine Anne Porter
"Parker's Back" (1965), tattooed man is Christ-evoking: analysis by 20 critics
"Judgment Day" (1965), old southerner goes home to die: analysis by 12 critics
The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor (1971), National Book Award
"To Flannery O'Connor" (1971), poem by Leon V. Driskel
A Prayer Journal (2013): review by Marilynne Robinson
50 critics discuss O'Connor
Odets, Clifford (1906-1963), leftwing playwright popular during Depression of 1930s
Introduction to Odets
Waiting for Lefty (1934), the definitive Marxist strike play: analysis by 4 critics
O'Hara, John (1905-1970), Naturalistic Realist on upper-middle class life in the Northeast
Introduction to O'Hara
Over the River and through the Wood (1934), model Realism: analysis
Appointment in Samarra (1934), perhaps his best novel
Ten North Frederick (1955), National Book Award
Olsen, Tillie (1912-2007), influential role model as working-class woman writer overcoming adversity:
mother of four daughters, feminist union organizer in the 1930s, member of Communist Party
Tell Me a Riddle (1961, 1995): four short stories, three from viewpoints of mothers
"Tell Me a Riddle" (1961): first prize O. Henry Award for best short story of the year
"I Stand Here Ironing" (1961): another famous story
O'Neill, Eugene (1888-1953): greatest American dramatist (Nobel Prize 1936)
Introduction to O'Neill
"Eugene O'Neill: A Sketch" (1962), Elizabeth Hardwick
56 quotations:
autobiographical, the quest, Romanticism, transcendent consciousness, beliefs, Naturalism,
happiness, morality, the iceman, truth, intoxication, last years, the playwright today, rejection
of Progressivism, Freud and Jung, pessimism, intentions, poetic drama, mystic, Man and God,
mystery, ancient Greek fate, masks, critics, cutting length, censorship, Hollywood, curtain,
death, epitaph.
Naturalism
Expressionism
Modernism
Beyond the Horizon (1920), romantic questing: analysis by 2 critics
The Emperor Jones (1920), Expressionistic rendering of black culture: analysis by 4 critics
The Emperor Jones, film adaptation (1933)
Anna Christie (1921): analysis by 4 critics
Anna Christie, film adaptation (1930)
The Hairy Ape (1922), Naturalism: analysis by 3 critics
The Hairy Ape, film adaptation (1944)
Desire under the Elms (1924), popular tragedy: analysis by 8 critics
Desire under the Elms, film adaptation (1958)
The Great God Brown (1926), Expressionism with masks: analysis by 4 critics
Lazarus Laughed (1927): analysis by 3 critics
Strange Interlude (1928), long long long interlude: analysis by 5 critics
Strange Interlude, film adaptation (1932)
Mourning Becomes Electra (1931): analysis by 5 critics
Mourning Becomes Electra, film adaptation (1947)
Ah, Wilderness, film adaptation (1935)
Long Day's Journey into Night (1940), autobio of family alcoholism: analysis by 5 critics
Long Day's Journey into Night, film adaptation (1962)
The Iceman Cometh (1946), lies can be kind: analysis by 3 critics
The Iceman Cometh, film adaptation (1973)
"Life Is a Bowl of Eugene O'Neills" (1931), Frank Sullivan: humor
30 critics discuss O'Neill
Ozick, Cynthia (1928- ), non-Feminist, philosophical Jewish fiction writer
Introduction to Ozick
Ethnic Fiction
The Pagan Rabbi and Other Stories (1971)
Paglia, Camille (1947- ), articulate social critic: 17 quotations
Paine, Thomas (1737-1809): voice of the American Revolution
Introduction to Paine
17 quotations
Neoclassicism
Deism
Parker, Dorothy (1893-1967): major American wit and screenwriter
Introduction to Parker
74 quotations:
autobiographical, men, women, love, women writers, Feminism, drinking, writing,
literary criticism, money, restraint, Hollywood, the Blacklist, wisdom, loneliness, suicide,
death, three epitaphs.
wit & humor: 68 quotations
10 critics discuss Parker
Pastan, Linda (1932- ), poet, "Emily Dickinson" (1971)
"Remembering Robert Frost at Kennedy's Inauguration" (2004)
pastoral
Paterson, Andrea, "Because I Could Not Dump" (1981): parody of Emily Dickinson
Paulson, A. B., Watchman Tell Us of the Night (1987), suburban comedy: 2 reviews
Postmodernism: Academic Expressionism
"University Life" (1997), humorous allegorical Expressionism: analysis
humor from "University Life"
Percy, Walker (1916-1990), Existentialist Catholic novelist: explicitly philosophical satire & wit
Introduction to Percy
Existentialism
"Walker Percy and the Archetypes," Ted R. Spivey
"Walker Percy's Aesthetic: Art as Symbolic Action," Michael Pearson
"Walker Percy and Modern Gnosticism," Cleanth Brooks
"Walker Percy: Eschatology and the Politics of Grace," Cecil L. Eubanks
"The Prophets of O'Connor, Percy, and Powers," Susan S. Kissel
The Moviegoer (1961), modern alienation, National Book Award: analysis by 9 critics
The Last Gentleman (1966), existential individuation, runner-up NB Award: analysis by 10 critics
Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World (1971),
Dr. More claims to save souls with "lapsometer": analysis by 7 critics
The Message in the Bottle (1975): essays on the novel, language, philosophy, and society
Lancelot (1977), modern madman is a Gnostic murderer--very dark: analysis by 8 critics
The Second Coming (1980), Will Barrett finds true love and God: analysis by 4 critics
The Thanatos Syndrome (1987), Dr. More uncovers plot to drug the population: analysis by 3 critics
12 critics discuss Percy
Perelman, S. J. (1904-1979), humorist and screenwriter: 26 quotations
Phillips, Wendell (1811-1884), eloquent civil rights leader: 42 quotations
Pinckney, Darryl (1953- ), Novelist, playwright, essayist, critic, editor
High Cotton (1992), novel of "growing up black and bourgeois" in 1960s: review
Sold and Gone: African-American Literature and U.S. Society (2001)
Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature (2002)
"Introduction," ed. The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick (2010)
Blackballed: The Black Vote and U.S. Democracy (2014)
Black Deutschland (2016), novel about a young gay black man in Berlin in 1980s
"Introduction," ed. The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick (2017)
Busted in New York and Other Essays (2019)
Plath, Sylvia (1932-1963), angry Feminist poet martyred by suicide
Introduction to Plath
"Sylvia Plath" (c.1972), Elizabeth Hardwick
Feminist Period (1970-present)
The Bell Jar (1963): analysis
The Collected Poems (1981), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Godiva" (c.2009), D. C. Berry: severe parody of Plath
Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849): hugely influential Gothic Romantic poet, story writer & critic
Introduction to Poe
98 quotations:
God, metaphysics, immortality, rejects Platonism, empiricism, rejects absolute empiricism,
Existentialism, Gothic determinism, religion, relativism, Democracy, progress, reformers, human
nature, bi-part soul, race, perversity, drugs, psychology, terror, madness, truth, obscurity, beauty,
Victorian fair lady, ideal woman, poetry, genius, art, popularity, criticism, transcendentalism,
New England Transcendentalists, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, definition of the short story,
single effect, sensations, death.
Romanticism
Gothicism
Poe defines short story & conventions of detective story
Poe in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
The style of Poe: analysis by 29 critics
"To Helen" (1831), fair ideal woman in classical form: analysis by 2 critics
"Ligeia" (1835), dark ideal woman & sexual repression: analysis by 2 critics
"Sarah Margaret Fuller" (1846): affirmative description
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), visionary science fiction: analysis by chapter
racist Pym contrasted with egalitarian Moby-Dick
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1840): most complex tale: analysis by 2 critics
"The Fall of the House of Usher": commentary by Allen Tate
"William Wilson" (1840), allegory of inescapable conscience: analysis
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), establishes detective conventions: commentary
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1841): satire of New England Transcendentalists
"The Tone Transcendental" (c.1841): ridicule of The Dial edited by Emerson & Fuller
"The Masque of the Red Death" (1842): analysis by Richard Wilbur
"Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales" (1842): review by Poe: excerpt
"The Black Cat" (1843), murderer confesses: analysis by 2 critics
"The Cask of Amontillado" (1846): anti-Christian black humor: analysis
"Ulalume" (1847): analysis by 5 critics
Poe's revised view of Hawthorne (1847), Poe confused by allegory: analysis
Eureka (1848), cosmology: analysis by Paul Valery and Allen Tate
"A Poe-em of Passion" (c.1882), C. F. Lummis: parody of Poe
"Ulabel Lume" (c.1955), Barbara Angell: parody of Poe
45 critics discuss Poe
Political Correctness & backlash against: quotations
Porter, Katherine Anne (1890-1980): one of the 5 greatest American short story writers
Introduction to Porter
"Katherine Anne Porter" (1982), Elizabeth Hardwick
409 quotations:
vision, southern family, religion, reading, marriage, love, middle-class conformity, Hollywood,
Mexico, Europe, the 1920s, writing, form, language, style, symbolism, "Flowering Judas,"
human nature, morality, Realism, Postmodernism, Political Correctness, death.
wit & humor: 40 quotations
Modernism
Porter in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
Feminists assault Porter: rebuttal
The style of Porter: analysis by 28 critics
"Maria Concepcion" (1922), passionate revenge of betrayed Mexican girl: analysis by 20 critics
"Variation 1001: To the Foolish Virgins Who Aren't Gathering Roses" (1922), poem parody: analysis
"This Transfusion" (1922-23), poem
"The Martyr" (1923), funny satire of fat Mexican painter: analysis by 9 critics
"Virgin Violeta" (1924): analysis by 9 critics
"Magic" (1928): analysis by 9 critics
"Rope" (1928), woman saves her marriage: analysis by 11 critics
"Theft" (1929), model of economical complexity published by Yvor Winters: analysis by 13 critics
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall" (1929), very popular deathbed irony: analysis by 17 critics
"Morning Song" (1929), poem: analysis
"Flowering Judas" (1930), idealistic American girl betrays herself in Mexico: analysis by 30 critics
"Flowering Judas": fictional film adaptation (2005)
"He" (1930), Christ-evoking retarded boy a burden to his family: analysis by 14 critics
"Liberals" (1933), poem: analysis
"The Grave" (1934), key religious symbolism: analysis by 23 critics
"The Cracked Looking-Glass" (1934): analysis by 14 critics
"Hacienda" (1932, 1934), encapsulates history of Mexico: analysis by 15 critics
"That Tree" (1934), satire of Buddhism and lazy faiths: analysis by 11 critics
"The Circus" (1935), little girl traumatized by life: analysis by 16 critics
"The Downward Path to Wisdom" (1939): analysis by 9 critics
"The Old Order" (1939): analysis by 15 critics
Old Mortality (1937, 1939), short novel often anthologized: analysis by 26 critics
Noon Wine (1939), world class short novel: analysis by 28 critics
"Noon Wine: The Sources" (1956): commentary by Porter on creative process
Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), great autobiographical short novel: analysis by 28 critics
"A Day's Work" (1940), masterpiece of irony: analysis by 12 critics
"The Leaning Tower" (1941): analysis by 21 critics
"Morning Song of the Tinker's Bitch" (1946), poem
"The Fig Tree" (1960): analysis by 10 critics
"Holiday" (1960): analysis by 14 critics
Ship of Fools (1962), famous long Modernist masterpiece: analysis in detail
42 critics discuss Ship of Fools
Postmodernist critics are fools on Ship of Fools: rebuttal of criticism
Ship of Fools film adaptation by Stanley Kramer (1965): analysis
wit and humor from Ship of Fools: erotic combat
"Flannery O'Connor at Home" (1964)
The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965), National Book Award
50 critics discuss Porter
Postmodern fiction and mass society, by Irving Howe (1959): excerpts
Postmodernism
Pound, Ezra (1885-1972): controversial instigator of Modern poetry went insane
Introduction to Pound
96 quotations:
urbanity, cosmopolitanism, independence, religion, education, teaching literature, teaching
writing, literature, Modernism, Henry James, 20th-century poetry, Yeats, Eliot, economics,
treason, decadence, Cantos, Postmodernism, Political Correctness, literary criticism, bad art,
the artist, patronage, writing, good writing, Neoclassical aesthetics, economy, simplicity,
avoid abstractions, concreteness, form, free verse, style, avant garde, Imagist poem,
Imagism and Vorticism, the Vortex.
Modernism
Imagism
"In a Station of the Metro" (c.1910), Imagist poem influenced by haiku: analysis by 4 critics
"L'Art, 1910": Imagist poems
"Rules" from Preface to Some Imagist Poets (1915)
"A Pact," with Walt Whitman (1916)
Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), his major poem other than cantos: analysis by 7 critics
"Portrait de'une Femme" (1926): analysis
"Canto XLV" (1937): analysis
from "Canto LXXXI" (1940): analysis
Cantos (1919-70): analysis by 9 critics
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1948), after controversy
"Ezra Pound" (1969), Robert Lowell
35 critics discuss Pound
Powers, J. F. (1917-1999), Catholic fiction dramatizing clerical life with satirical Realism and humor
Introduction to Powers
Realism
"The Prophets of O'Connor, Percy, and Powers" (1980): analysis
"Lions, Harts, Leaping Does" (1947), redemption and death of a philosophical priest
Morte d'Urban (1962), National Book Award: priest overcomes materialism in spiritual triumph
Price, Reynolds (1933- ), fiction writer and poet--commonplace folksy Realist in North Carolina
Introduction to Price
A Long and Happy Life (1962), romantic Rosacoke Mustian loves insensitive Wesley Beavers
A Generous Man (1966), fifteen-year-old Milo Mustian is an impatient virgin--funny & phallic
primary modes of early American novel
Proudfit, David Law (1842-1897), "Prehistoric Smith" (c.1897): humor
Proulx, Annie (1935- ), Postmodernist fiction writer with very artificial style
Postmodernism
The Shipping News (1993), Postmodernist style, National Book Award: very critical analysis
Puritan
Puritanism: historical and psychological
"Puritanism as a Literary Force" (1917), iconoclastic H. L. Mencken: analysis
Pynchon, Thomas (1937- ): intellectual sci-fi cartoon fantasies of a 1960s anarchist & atheist
Introduction to Pynchon
160 quotations:
youth, legendary recluse, America, urbanity, old Victorian paradigm, Feminism, the rocket,
women, merely sign language, sex, isolation, Naturalism, chance, indifference, religion, atheism,
science, entropy, pessimism, technology and power, paranoia, 1960s counterculture, pacifism,
anti-capitalism, Communism, Postmodernism, Postmodern poetry, Political Correctness,
apocalyptic glee, dehumanization, amorality, limited vision, solipsism, binary thinking, reductive
politics, longing for transcendence, loss of belief in literature, fantasy, parody rhetoric, writing,
arrogance, words, foolish fictions, refuses honor, advice, death.
Postmodernism: Pynchon epitomizes
Countercultural Fiction
"Entropy" (1960): the world is running out of energy: analysis by 14 critics
V. (1963), nihilistic weird atmospheres during quest ending in a dump: analysis by 18 critics
The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), cynical atheist cartoonlike reply to feminism and capitalism,
the epitome of Postmodernism: analysis by chapter
25 critics discuss The Crying of Lot 49
humor from The Crying of Lot 49
Gravity's Rainbow (1973), overrated atheist epic of a penis & a rocket in WW II, Natl Book Award:
analysis by 35 critics
"The Crying of Lot 49" (2008), John Crace: parody of Pynchon
"Pinchy Ciphering" (2009), Michael Hollister: satire of Pynchon
34 critics discuss Pynchon
Randall, Dudley (1914-2000), "Booker T. and W.E.B." (1969): black cultural debate
Ransom, John Crowe (1888-1974), distinguished Southern agrarian poet founded objective New Criticism
Introduction to Ransom
"Winter Remembered" (1924)
"Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter" (1924)
"Antique Harvesters" (1927): analysis
"The Equilibrists" (1927): analysis
I'll Take My Stand (1930), manifesto of Agrarian movement led by Ransom & others
The New Criticism (1941), manifesto of movement led by Ransom, Tate, Gordon, Brooks & Warren
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1950)
Realism
Reed, Ishmael (1938- ), innovative black poet, satirist & fantasy writer promoted independent
minority aesthetic, attacked New York literary establishment for prejudice, angering Feminists
Introduction to Reed
Expressionism
Ethnic Fiction
Postmodernism
Reckless Eyeballing (1986), black male defiance of Feminist oppression: analysis
Reds (1981), significant film, screenplay by Warren Beatty & Trevor Griffiths:
American disillusionment with Communism: analysis
Reider, Curtis H., "Stein and Hemingway and Joyce" (c.1930s): humor
Rice, Elmer (1892-1967), The Adding Machine (1923), Expressionist drama: analysis by 6 critics
Rich, Adrienne (1929-2012), popular especially with women: "Diving into the Wreck" (1973)
'I Am in Danger -- Sir -' (1950-99): homage to Dickinson
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (2003)
Robbins, Tom (1932- ), Another Roadside Attraction (1971), atheist Tarzan in cartoon hippieville
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Roberts, Elizabeth Madox (1886-1941), pastoral Kentucky poet & allegorical fiction writer once popular
Introduction to Roberts
Romanticism
Realism
pastoralisms
"The Sky" (c.1915-22), archetypal nature poem
"Christmas Morning" (c.1915-22), clever religious poem
The poetry of Roberts: commentary by 5 critics including Yvor Winters
The poetic style of Roberts in fiction: analysis by 3 critics
The Time of Man (1926), most say her best--odyssey of tenant farm family: analysis by 6 critics
My Heart and My Flesh (1927), poor rural woman finds herself, nature and God: analysis by 5 critics
Jingling in the Wind (1928), rainmakers' convention--fantasy & satire: analysis by 5 critics
The Great Meadow (1930), most popular, epic of pioneers settling Kentucky in 1770s: analysis by 6
A Buried Treasure (1931), earth more valuable than gold: analysis by 5 critics
He Sent Forth a Raven (1935), biblical parallels, mainly to Noah: analysis by 5 critics
Black Is My Truelove's Hair (1938), woman with two lovers: analysis by 5 critics
"The Haunted Palace" (1941), farm woman frightened by her own reflection: analysis by 2 critics
"The Betrothed" (1941), ambivalent girl prepares for marriage: analysis by 2 critics
11 critics discuss Roberts
Robinson, Edwin Arlington (1869-1935): stoical Christian precursor of Modernism won 3 Pulitzer Prizes
Introduction to Robinson
"Credo" (1896), his philosophy of life: analysis
"L'Envoi" (1897): analysis
"Richard Cory" (1897): analysis by 2 critics
"Miniver Cheevy" (1910), one of most popular: analysis of humor by 5 critics
"Walt Whitman" (c.1910)
"Eros Turannos" (1916), one of his best: analysis
"The Dark Hills" (1920): analysis
"Mr. Flood's Party" (1921), another of most popular: analysis of humor by 3 critics
Collected Poems (1922), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"The Sheaves" (1925)
21 critics discuss Robinson
Robinson, Marilynne (1943- ): Christian Realist in Transcendental mode—a major novelist
65 quotations of Robinson:
family, conception, independence, reeducation, science, religion, pastoralism, Faith,
religious traditions, unorthodox Calvinism, philosophy, grace, love, transcendence,
Realism, writing, Political Correctness, Postmodernism, immortality.
Calvinism
Realism
Modernism
Housekeeping (1980), brilliant haunting novel of liberation: analysis by chapter
3 critics discuss Housekeeping
Gilead (2004), Pulitzer Prize: 6 reviews
Home (2008): 6 reviews
Review of A Prayer Journal (2013), Flannery O'Connor, by Robinson
Lila (2014): 10 reviews
Rogers, Will (1879-1935): beloved cowboy humorist
87 quotations:
ignorance, education, Prohibition, judgment, foresight, human nature, modern life, advertising,
money, politics, government, Congress, Democracy, lawyers, taxes, golf, diplomacy, America,
war, Communism, Hollywood, memoirs, past and future, advice.
Roethke, Theodore (1908-1963), influential poet
"My Papa's Waltz" (1950): analysis
"The Waking" (1953), transcendental
The Waking (1954), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1958)
Romanticism
Ross, Alan (British) (1922-2001), "Radar" (1954): analysis
Roth, Philip (1933-2018): autobiographical Postmodernist novelist focused on Jewish culture and sex
Introduction to Roth
79 quotations:
autobiographical, psychoanalysis, autobiographical fiction, teaching, human nature, Jews,
memory, literature, writing, Postmodernism, Feminism, Political Correctness, America,
old age, death.
Postmodernism: Ethnic Fiction
Goodbye, Columbus (1959), stories of Jewish middle class outraged them, National Bk Award
Portnoy's Complaint (1969), stunted by his overbearing Jewish mother: analysis by 2 critics
American Pastoral (1997), Pulitzer Prize: analysis
"Paradise Lost: Philip Roth" (1997): analysis by Elizabeth Hardwick
6 critics discuss Roth
Rowlandson, Mary (c.1635-1678), Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682):
commentary on first Indian captivity narrative
Indian captivity narratives
Rukeyser, Muriel (1913-1980), "This Place in the Ways" (1948)
"Double Dialogue: Homage to Robert Frost" (1994)
Salinger, J. D. (1919-2010): social Realist fiction writer adept at adolescent voice
Introduction to Salinger
76 quotations:
parents, God, spirituality, logic and intellect, education, Catcher in the Rye, being an artist, poets,
androgyny, bohemian conformity, truth, passivity, disgust, lying, alienation, loneliness, money,
girl cities, good looks, girls, sex, anxiety and cowardice, maturation, advice, death.
"Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" (1948), empty suburban lives: analysis
"For Esme with Love and Squalor" (1950): analysis by 9 critics
The Catcher in the Rye (1951), smash hit novel of adolescence: analysis by 21 critics
23 critics discuss Salinger
Sandburg, Carl (1878-1967), cultivated his image as the people's poet in tradition of Whitman,
biographer of Lincoln
Imagism
"The Fog" (c.1915), most famous of Imagist poems
"Chicago" (1916), his other most well-known poem
"To the Ghost of John Milton" (1928): more complex than Imagist poems: analysis
Complete Poems (1951), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Schulberg, Budd (1914-2009), What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), Hollywood hustling: commentary
The Disenchanted (1950), novel based on screenplay collaboration with F. Scott Fitzgerald
On the Waterfront (1954), anti-Communist screenplay: Schulberg & Elia Kazan dupe the Hollywood
Reds and win Oscars: analysis from Follywood (2005)
Schwartz, Delmore (1913-1966), complex Modernist poet admired by other poets
"Sons of the City's Pavements" (1984), Elizabeth Hardwick
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1959)
Scott, Winfield Townley (1910-1968), "The U.S. Sailor with the Japanese Skull" (1945): analysis
Seeger, Alan (1888-1916), war hero, from "Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers for France" (1916)
Sewall, Samuel (1652-1730): only witch trial judge to apologize
from Diary, his courtship of Madame Winthrop (1720): humor
"Samuel Sewall" (1954), poem by Anthony Hecht
Sexton, Anne (1928-1974), very confessional poet focused on death committed suicide
"Her Kind" (1960)
Live or Die (1967), Pulitzer Prize
Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris (1919-1941): Sylvia Beach quoted
Shapiro, Karl (1913-2000), poet led the opposition to T. S. Eliot and his followers
"The Fly" (c.1944)
V-Letter and Other Poems (1946), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1969)
short story: definitions
short story: historical survey
Silko, Leslie Marmon (1948- ), Ceremony (1977), Indian still angry: analysis
Ethnic Fiction
Simpson, Louis (1923-2012), intellectual poet
"Squeal" (1957): parody of "Howl" (1955) by Allen Ginsberg
"In California" (1963)
At the End of the Road (1964), poems, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Sinclair, Upton (1878-1968): influential Socialist muckraker
The Jungle (1906), filthy conditions in meat industry: commentary
8 critics discuss Sinclair
Singer, Isaac (1904- ), prolific Jewish fiction writer, dramatist, autobiographer, children's book writer,
escaped the Nazis, wrote in Yiddish, won many awards including Nobel Prize (1978)
Introduction to Singer
Ethnic Fiction
Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories (1963), "Gimpel" translated by Saul Bellow
A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1973), National Book Award
A Little Boy in Search of God: Mysticism in a Personal Light (1976)
The Collected Stories (1982)
Stories for Children (1984)
Snodgrass, W. D. (1926-2009), contemporary poet
Heart's Needle (1960), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Powwow" (1962), decadence of Native American culture: analysis
Snyder, Gary (1930- ), eco poet
Turtle Island (1974), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1997)
Socialism opposed in American literature: 40 writers quoted
Sontag, Susan (1933-2004), influential cultural critic and fiction writer oriented to European trends
Introduction to Sontag
Gothicism
Postmodernism
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966): Postmodern resistance to meaning
Death Kit (1967), novel, very dark Gothic Postmodernism--stuck in a tunnel to nowhere
"The Way We Live Now" (1987), story, man dying of AIDS with no transcendence: review
In America (2000), National Book Award
Sorrentino, Gilbert (1929-2006), Mulligan Stew (1979), scrapbook fiction: analysis
Postmodernism: Academic Expressionism
Stafford, Jean (1915-1979): outstanding neglected fiction writer, Pulitzer Prize (1970) for Collected Stories
Introduction to Stafford
305 quotations:
youth, education, language, writers, writing, changes in styles, consciousness, emotions,
evocative description, clothes, humor, Impressionism, Expressionism, gender, sex, love, beauty,
Boston, society, race, feminism, morality, religion, surgery, anesthesia, psychiatry, alcoholism,
summation, death, salvation, glory.
wit & humor: 106 quotations
Realism
Modernism
The style of Stafford: analysis by 26 critics
Feminists assault Stafford: rebuttal
Boston Adventure (1944), poor girl rises in society and soul--brilliant style: analysis by 11 critics
"The Darkening Moon" (1944), symbolic eclipse: analysis by 4 critics
"The Home Front" (1945), wartime anti-Semitism against Jewish refugee: analysis by 4 critics
"Between the Porch and the Altar" (1945), questioning Catholic girl at Mass: analysis by 4 critics
"The Captain's Gift" (1946), naive old lady hurt by reality of war: analysis by 3 critics
The Interior Castle (1946), brain discovers soul via great pain: analysis by 8 critics
The Mountain Lion (1947), brother & sister clash on Colorado ranch: analysis by 17 critics
"The Bleeding Heart" (1948), Mexican girl disillusioned by old suitor: analysis by 5 critics
"A Summer Day" (1948), ironies of Cherokee orphan boy in Indian custody: analysis by 3 critics
"Children Are Bored on Sunday" (1948), critique of NY intellectual snobs: analysis by 5 critics
"Polite Conversation" (1949): analysis by 5 critics
"The Maiden" (1950), Old Europe still barbaric: analysis by 3 critics
"A Country Love Story" (1950), based on breakdown of marriage to Lowell: analysis by 7 critics
"The Echo and the Nemesis" (1950), fat girl invents twin: analysis by 5 critics
"The Healthiest Girl in Town" (1951), culture of American West vs East: analysis by 5 critics
The Catherine Wheel (1952), allegorical novel of redemption set in Hawthorne parallels structure of
The Scarlet Letter--embittered spinster martyrs herself: analysis in detail
The Catherine Wheel: analysis in detail, with critique of critics
"I Love Someone" (1952), spinster overcomes bitterness: analysis by 4 critics
"Life Is No Abyss" (1952), God's grace to those who can love: analysis by 5 critics
"The Violet Rock" (1952): analysis by 3 critics
"The Liberation" (1953), young teacher escapes overbearing family: analysis by 4 critics
"In the Zoo" (1953), first prize O' Henry Award, her favorite: analysis by 4 critics
A Winter's Tale (1954), short novel of affair in Heidelberg with a Nazi: analysis by 5 critics
"Bad Characters" (1954), very funny, like Twain: analysis by 5 critics
"Beatrice Trueblood's Story" (1955), psychosomatic deafness: analysis by 5 critics
"Maggie Meriwether's Rich Experience" (1955), decadent rich Europeans: analysis by 5 critics
"Caveat Emptor" (1956), college teachers fall in love: analysis by 4 critics
"A Reading Problem" (1956), Twainian satire of "hillbilly fakers": analysis by 4 critics
"The Mountain Day" (1956), shocking upset of greenhorns: analysis by 4 critics
"The End of a Career" (1956), superficial beauty: analysis by 5 critics
"A Reasonable Facsimile" (1957), student apes mentoring professor: analysis by 4 critics
"The Children's Game" (1958), gambling addiction: analysis by 3 critics
"The Tea Time of Stouthearted Ladies" (1964), satire of complacent landladies: analysis by 5 critics
"The Philosophy Lesson" (1968), based on her own nude modeling: analysis by 5 critics
The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford (1969), Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 4 critics
"An Influx of Poets" (1978), satire of poetry establishment: analysis by 5 critics
30 critics discuss Stafford
Stafford, William (1914-1999), "Travelling through the Dark" (1960): analysis by Stafford
"At the Robert Frost Memorial" (1982)
"Understanding Poetry, by William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens" (1987)
Steele, Wilbur Daniel (1886-1970), "The Man Who Saw through Heaven" (1927): analysis
Stegner, Wallace (1909-1993): the major Realist of 20th century--fiction writer, historian, conservationist
Introduction to Stegner
305 quotations:
youth, humor, education, college, psychology, literature, Thoreau, America, American, Native
Americans, Nature, wilderness, the West, myth, conservation, environmentalism, religion,
teaching, writing, Big Rock Candy Mountain, All the Little Live Things, Angle of Repose,
aesthetics, short story, Realism, Impressionism, metaphors, 1960s counterculture, history,
Postmodernism, Postmodernist aesthetics, English Departments, literary theory, publishing,
recent novels by others, sex, politics, race, women, wife Mary, character, wisdom, death,
last words
Realism
Postmodernism: Realism
24 books by Stegner: summaries
major themes in Stegner's short stories: overview
historical survey of the American short story (1957), Stegner
Stegner and Hemingway compared: analysis
The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943), American dreaming in the frontier West: analysis by 10 critics
"The Volcano" (1944): analysis by 2 critics
"The Women on the Wall" (1949), waiting for mail during WWII: commentary by Stegner
"The Women on the Wall": analysis by 2 critics
"The Blue-Winged Teal" (1950): analysis by 3 critics
"The Sweetness of the Twisted Apples" (1950), echo of Sherwood Anderson: analysis by 2 critics
The Preacher and the Slave (1950), bio novel of radical labor leader Joe Hill: analysis by 3 critics
"The Traveler" (1951): analysis
Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (1954), explorer biography: review by Mari Sandoz
"Field Guide to the Western Birds" (1956): analysis by 2 critics
Genesis (1959), novella of durable cowboys: analysis by 5 critics
Wolf Willow (1962), memoir set in Canada blending genres: analysis by 4 critics
"My Antonia by Willa Cather" (1965): analysis by Stegner
All the Little Live Things (1967), great novel counters 1960s counterculture: analysis by chapter
humor from All the Little Live Things
Angle of Repose (1971), major novel of the West, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 13 critics
The Spectator Bird (1976), National Book Award: analysis
Crossing to Safety (1987): review by Doris Grumbach
Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner (1990): review by Anne Tyler
"Qualified Homage to Thoreau" (1997), by Stegner
New York Times admits trying to destroy Stegner for being conservative (2009)
45 critics discuss Stegner
Stein, Gertrude (1874-1946): influential first Modernist originated tradition of experimental writing
Introduction to Stein
"Gertrude Stein" (1987), Elizabeth Hardwick
127 quotations:
autobiographical, genius, talking, education, skepticism, reality, art, 19th century, literature,
conventional language, writing, abstract Expressionism, repetition, lack of plot, punctuation,
America, other countries, Communism, destruction of the family, Socialism, tax the rich,
disillusionment, Feminism, votes for children, history, money, relationships, men, Nature,
war, age, death.
Modernism
Expressionism
Republicanism
"Picasso" (1909), actually a self-portrait: analysis
The style of Stein: analysis by 4 critics
rejection slip to Stein, by A. J. Fifield: parody
"Battology," by Ronald Knox: parody
24 critics discuss Stein
Steinbeck, John (1902-1968): pastoral proletarian Realist (Nobel Prize 1962)
Introduction to Steinbeck
132 quotations:
autobiographical, freedom, human nature, human glory, perfectability, God, religion, woman,
sex, society, City and Garden, suffering, proletarianism, pastoralism, environmentalism, Eden
in the West, America, Europe, government, Socialism Communism, Postmodernism, Political
Correctness, censoring literature, writing, Realism and Romance, dreams, the writer, Faulkner,
teaching, critics, dog eats draft, Nobel Prize, death.
Realism
folk pastoralism
Tortilla Flat (1935), pastoral paisanos of Monterey: analysis by 4 critics
In Dubious Battle (1936), labor movement & Communism: analysis by 7 critics
Of Mice and Men (1937), tragedy of farm workers: analysis by 8 critics
The Red Pony (1938), pastoral young adult novella: analysis
"The Chrysanthemums" (1938), woman in the Garden: analysis
"The Snake" (1938), dissociated scientist confronts his repressed sexuality: analysis
"Flight" (1938), Mexican boy's poignant transcendence of deterministic fate: analysis
The Grapes of Wrath (1939), major epic of the 1930s Dust Bowl, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 30 critics
The Grapes of Wrath, fine film adaptation by Nunnally Johnson and John Ford (1940): review
Cannery Row (1944), colorful folk pastoral characters in Monterey: analysis by 4 critics
East of Eden (1953), family conflict in rural California: analysis by 7 critics
26 critics discuss Steinbeck
Steinem, Gloria (1934- ), "What It Would Be Like If Women Win" (1970): unintentional humor
Feminist Period in American Literature (1970-present)
Stevens, Wallace (1879-1955): major Modernist poet in world literature
Introduction to Stevens
74 quotations:
autobiographical, metaphysics, the mind, multiple points of view, reality, "unreal city," human
nature, intolerance, sex and egotism, sentimentality, love, poetry, reading poetry, the poem, style,
the poet, Existentialism, imagination, consciousness, metaphor, aesthetics, hedonism, American
literature, old age, final beliefs, death.
Romanticism
Modernism
"Sunday Morning" (1915), one of best American poems of 20th century: analysis by stanza
10 critics discuss "Sunday Morning"
"Anecdote of the Jar" (1916), human mind creates order: analysis by 5 critics
"The Comedian as the Letter C" (1923): analysis by 4 critics
"Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" (1923): analysis by 2 critics
"A High-Toned Old Christian Woman" (1923): analysis
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (1923), model of Modernism: analysis by 4 critics
"Peter Quince at the Clavier" (1923): analysis by 3 critics
"The Emperor of Ice Cream" (1923): analysis by 3 critics
"The Idea of Order at Key West" (1935): analysis by 3 critics
"The Glass of Water " (1942): analysis
"Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" (1942): analysis by 4 critics
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1949)
Collected Poems (1955), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Understanding Poetry, by William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens (1987): tribute by
William Stafford
42 critics discuss Stevens
Stevenson, Adlai (1900-1965): witty articulate Democratic candidate for President:
79 quotations:
autobiographical, Nature, earth, America, entitlement, materialism, optimism, freedom, education,
newspapers, melting pot, race, religion, intellectual diversity, Communism, Democracy, common
people, politics, government, foreign policy, character, wisdom, aging, advice.
Stone, Robert (1937-2015), cynical liberal out of 1960s, often Expressionistic novelist with intense style
Introduction to Stone
Naturalism
Expressionism
Postmodernism: realism
A Hall of Mirrors (1967), very Expressionistic style--violence, racism and jingoism in New Orleans
Dog Soldiers (1974), National Book Award, drug trade after Vietnam War--was filmed: analysis
A Flag for Sunrise (1981), Central American corruption, loss of faith and decency
Children of Light (1985), decadent Hollywood, hence difficult to care about the characters: review
from Children of Light, fictional filming of The Awakening by Chopin: quotations
4 critics discuss Stone
Stowe, Harriet Beecher (1811-1896): "who started this great war"—Lincoln
Introduction to Stowe
23 quotations:
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852): commentary by 4 critics
"Harriet Beecher Stowe" (1899), tribute by Paul Dunbar
4 critics discuss Stowe
stream of consciousness
Strong, George A., "What Hiawatha Probably Did" (1856): parody of Longfellow
Styron, William (1925-2006): southern historical Realist with elaborate style
Introduction to Styron
30 quotations:
writing, Realist resists Modernism, generations, literature, Postmodernism, Political Correctness,
critics, depression, death.
Realism
Lie Down in Darkness (1951), decadent southern family in Faulknerian style: analysis by 3 critics
Set This House on Fire (1960), guilt and redemption in Italy: analysis
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), based on historical 1831 slave rebellion, very controversial
among black critics, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 6 critics
Sophie's Choice (1979), National Book Award, powerful agonizing tragedy in Nazi Germany:
commentary by Elizabeth Hardwick (1983)
analysis by 3 critics
Sullivan, Frank (1908-1976), "Life Is a Bowl of Eugene O'Neills" (1931): humor
symbol
Taggard, Genevieve (1894-1948), "With Child" (1922)
Tan, Amy (1952- ), Chinese-American author of huge best-seller adapted in popular film
The Joy Luck Club (1987), Chinese-American family assimilates: translated into 35 languages
Tate, Allen (1899-1977): major poet, novelist, biographer, southern historian, essayist, and New Critic
Introduction to Tate
Agrarian Pastoralism
Neoclassicism
Modernism
New Criticism
The styles of Tate: analysis by 33 critics
"Allen Tate's Poetry" (1939), Cleanth Brooks
"The Current in the Frozen Stream" (1948), Howard Nemerov
"The Poetry of Allen Tate" (1951), Vivienne Koch
"The Courage of Irony: The Poetry of Allen Tate" (1965), Katherine Garrison Chapin
"An Introduction to the Poetry of Allen Tate" (1970), Alfredo Rizzardi
"Allen Tate's Inferno" (1971), Sister Mary Bernetta, O.S.F.
"On Allen Tate" (1971), Denis Donoghue
Tate introduces 6 poets: Dickinson, Robinson, Moore, Cummings, Aiken, Hart Crane
"Death of Little Boys" (1925): analysis by 5 critics
"The Subway" (1928), modern age induces psychological disorder: analysis by 2 critics
"Mr. Pope" (1928), age of Alexander Pope compared to modern age of Tate: analysis by 4 critics
"Ode to the Confederate Dead" (1928), a classic: commentary by Tate with analysis by 7 critics
Stonewall Jackson, The Good Soldier: A Narrative biography (1928)
Jefferson Davis, His Rise and Fall: A Biographical Narrative (1929)
"Mother and Son" (1930), autobiographical anguish: analysis by 2 critics
"The Southern Religion," I'll Take My Stand (1930), landmark collection by Southern Agrarians
"Last Days of Alice" (1931): analysis by 3 critics
"The Cross" (1932), struggle with Christian belief: analysis by 5 critics
"The Meaning of Life" (1933): analysis by 2 critics
"Sonnets at Christmas 1934" (1936): analysis by 4 critics
"The Mediterranean" (1936): analysis by 5 critics
"Aeneas at Washington" (1936), conflates ancient and modern worlds: analysis by 4 critics
"Tension in Poetry" (1938): influential critical essay
"Narcissus as Narcissus" (1938): includes Tate's commentary on "Ode to the Confederate Dead"
The Fathers (1938), outstanding novel of the Old South and the Civil War: analysis by 16 critics
"Seasons of the Soul" (1944), complex key poem: analysis by 7 critics
The House of Fiction (1950), very influential anthology with Caroline Gordon: analysis by 10 critics
3 of Tate's commentaries, examples of New Criticism:
"The Fall of the House of Usher," Edgar Allan Poe: commentary
"The Beast in the Jungle," Henry James: commentary
"The Dead," James Joyce: commentary
"Notes on Fictional Technique": The Four Methods of Narration (1950, 1960): Gordon & Tate
"The Swimmers" (1951), lynching: analysis by 5 critics
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1956)
cartoon of Tate and Gordon
"Homage to Allen Tate," Sewanee Review (1959): tributes from R. P. Blackmur, Malcolm Cowley,
Donald Davidson, T. S. Eliot, Francis Fergusson, Anthony Hecht, Robert Lowell, Andrew Lytle,
Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Arthur Mizener, Howard Nemerov, Katherine Anne Porter, John
Crowe Ransom, Herbert Read, Mark Van Doren, Eliseo Vivas, and others.
50 critics discuss Tate
Taylor, Edward (c.1645-1729): the American Metaphysical poet
Puritanism
Calvinism
Taylor and Jonathan Edwards
"Preface," God's Determinations Touching His Elect (c.1682): analysis
"Housewifery," God cast as housewife: analysis
5 critics discuss Taylor
Taylor, Peter (1917-1994): southern fiction writer & dramatist focused on the modern family
Introduction to Taylor
A Woman of Means (1950), short novel of manners & family: analysis by 4 critics
"The Old Forest" (1978 ), liberated environmentalist women prevail over men: analysis by 2 critics
14 critics discuss Taylor
Teasdale, Sara ( ), Love Songs (1918), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Thompson, William Henry (1848-c.1918), "The High Tide at Gettysburg" (1888)
Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862): world icon of civil disobedience and love of Nature
Introduction to Thoreau
192 quotations:
youth, education, reading, intellect, inductive objectivity, archetypal intuition, truth, philosophy,
the past, independence, solitude, westward movement, Nature, wilderness, fear, pastoralism,
machine in the Garden, man in society, scorn for Socialism, money, government, anarchism,
Democracy, America, progress, social reform, minority power, conscience, moral action,
civil disobedience, jail, violent rebellion, wisdom, simplicity, motive for retreat to Walden Pond,
pond reflects soul, individuation, Puritanism and redemption, drugs, transcendent consciousness,
idealism, religion, God, optimism, death, immortality.
Romanticism
New England Transcendentalism
Nature in American literature
Thoreau in the history of philosophy, by Herbert W. Schneider
politics of Thoreau, by Heinz Eulau
style of Thoreau: analysis by 3 critics
"My Life Is Like a Stroll upon the Beach" (1849), poem by Thoreau
"Civil Disobedience" (1849), hugely influential political manifesto: analysis
Walden (1854), world classic: analysis by chapter
40 critics discuss Walden
Thoreau visits Walt Whitman (1856)
"Walking" (1862): excerpts
"On Visiting the Graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau" (1886), poem by Jones Very
"To Thoreau on Rereading Walden" (1955), poem by Isabella Gardner
"Qualified Homage to Thoreau" (1998), essay by Wallace Stegner
50 critics discuss Thoreau
Thurber, James (1894-1961): popular American humorist and writer of fables
110 quotations:
autobiographical, Lost Generation, consciousness, revised maxims, women, love, marriage,
human nature, philosophy, America, liberal economics, writing, language, how to write,
literature, drawings, humor and wit, laughter, dogs, old age, time, alcohol, death, last words,
immortality.
"The Owl Who Was God" (1940): humorous fable
Timrod, Henry (1828-1867), "Ode," to the Confederate Dead (1867)
Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805-1859): predicted the future of America
37 quotations from Democracy in America (1935,40), classic often quoted:
Indians, wilderness, worldliness, the People, politicians, Socialism, equality, private citizens,
self-interest, government of laws, political parties, religious faith, conformity, mass society,
war, history, literacy, Postmodern literature to come, Feminists, Victorian gender roles,
American women superior
Tominova, Zdena (1941-2020), Stalin's Shoe (1987): review
Toole, John Kennedy (1937-1969): martyr to incompetent editors
Preface to Dunces, by Walker Percy
A Confederacy of Dunces (1969), comic novel, Pulitzer Prize: commentary by 3 critics
humor from Dunces
3 critics discuss Toole
Toomer, Jean (1894-1967), mixed-race writer in Harlem Renaissance identified his race as "American"
Introduction to Toomer
Ethnic Fiction
Cane (1923), set in rural Georgia, poetry & prose seminal for black writers: analysis by 5 critics
transcendental
Transcendentalism, New England: 11 critics discuss
Edwards to Emerson, by Perry Miller: quotations
Emerson, Nature (1836), Transcendentalist bible: 24 critics discuss
The Dial (1840-44), The Editors to the Reader (Emerson & Fuller): excerpts
Fuller, "A Transcendental Conversation" (1841)
"The Tone Transcendental" (c.1841): Poe belittles The Dial
"Never Bet the Devil Your Head" (1841): Poe satirizes Emerson
Emerson, "The Transcendentalist" (1842): definition
Emerson lecture on "The Poet" (1844): review by Walt Whitman
"Sarah Margaret Fuller" (1846): commentary by Poe on Woman in the Nineteenth Century
"The Old Manse" (1846): Hawthorne critiques Transcendental counterculture
"Moral Mutiny in New England" (1865), Lowell recalls
Nature in American literature
Troll Hunter (2010), Norwegian film by Andre Ovredal, political & religious allegory: analysis
Tuckerman, Frederick Goddard (1821-1873), "Sonnet XVI" (1860): analysis
Twain, Mark (1835-1910): most popular American writer--greatest humorist and wit
Introduction to Twain
750 quotations:
youth, creation, monkeys, man, Adam and Eve, indecency, nudity, sex, women, ladies, courtship,
gentleman, love, live your dream, marriage, wives, adultery, New Woman, women's rights,
conversion, two-headed girl, aristocracy, wealthy Americans and titles, ignorance, children,
obedience, education, schools, history, psychology, heart, head, human nature, other animals,
civilization, progress, getting ahead, work, virtue, morals, truth, memory, lies, honesty, principles,
prosperity, money, talking, vices, vanity, malice, anger, swearing, reform, health, exercise,
irreverence, Christianity, missionaries, preachers, prophecy, Providence, Faith, religion, God,
Satan, Hell, Indians, loss of the sacred, science, weather, America, Thanksgiving, lawyers, rights,
race, equality, government, Democracy, Socialism, war, patriotism, politicians, Congress,
reputation, advertising, newspapers, free speech, Huckleberry Finn, censorship, popular Romantic
literature, Realism, telling stories, audience, the native novelist, genius, facts in fiction, dramatize,
words, wit and humor, maxims, editing, publishers, critics, compliments, honors, fame, courage,
friends, fools, lunatics, asses and optimists, literature, prose and poetry, Sir Walter Scott, Cooper,
poetry, Howells, Henry James, Kipling, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Jane Austen, Poe, Milton,
reading, Shakespeare and Bunyan, travel, Nevada, San Francisco, Hawaii, St. Louis, Cincinnati,
Chicago, New York, Boston, southerners, English language, Englishman, Irishman, France, Italy,
German, German culture, Russians, Communism, Cuba, ancient Greece, India, old age, the future,
death, last words, immortality, Heaven.
Calvinism
Victorianism
Realism
The style of Twain: analysis by 7 critics
Roughing It (1872): analysis by 8 critics
Huckleberry Finn (1884), most beloved and most censored American book: analysis by chapter
censorship of Huckleberry Finn (1884-forever)
Twain responds to censorship of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: humor
rebuttals to 12 aesthetic and racial criticisms of Huckleberry Finn
rebuttals to Feminist criticisms of Huckleberry Finn
defense of the ending of Huckleberry Finn: analysis
themes, motifs & patterns in Huckleberry Finn: analysis
objective correlative in Huckleberry Finn: Jim and his daughter
real life models for characters in Huckleberry Finn
pastoral structure of Huckleberry Finn: analysis
humor from Huckleberry Finn
style in Huckleberry Finn
Huckleberry Finn film adaptation by James Lee (1960): review
"Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots, Dec'd," from Huck: parody & commentary
humor from "English as She Is Taught" (1887): students answer questions
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889): analysis by 10 critics
Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), Nurture over Nature, opposite of Huck: analysis by 20 critics
"The Late Benjamin Franklin" (c.1889): humor
"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895): humor
Twain's literary offenses against Cooper: analysis
"The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1899): analysis
"The Mysterious Stranger" (1916), late nihilism: excerpt
T. S. Eliot psychoanalyzes Twain
50 critics discuss Twain
Tyler, Anne (1941- ), popular fiction writer in Realist tradition of Howells, over 40 stories and 11 novels
Introduction to Tyler
Realism
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), breakout novel into popularity
The Accidental Tourist (1986), most popular novel got mixed reviews, was filmed
Breathing Lessons (1988), Pulitzer Prize
Tyler, Royall (1757-1826): wrote first notable American drama
The Contrast (1787), contrast between American and British cultures: commentary
The Algerine Captive (1797), anti-slavery novel: commentary
Updike, John (1932-2009): prolific stylist chronicled adulterous middle-class life with many metaphors
Introduction to Updike
98 quotations:
autobiographical, religion, God, existence, nature, Realism, love, women, marriage, sex, adultery,
society, children, Feminism, Postmodernism, pacifists as stateless eunuchs, Political Correctness,
government, free speech, leadership, America, writing, Expressionism, criticism, old age, death.
Postmodernist Realism: sexcapades in suburbia
"Citizen Updike" (1989), Elizabeth Hardwick
"On the Sidewalk" (1959): Updike parody of On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
"Pigeon Feathers" (1962), existence of God evinced by design: analysis
The Centaur (1963), National Book Award, weak imitation of Joyce
"Leaves" (1964): commentary by Updike
The Witches of Eastwick (1984), entertaining devilish satire of Feminism: analysis by chapter
"Afterlife" (1987): review
"Miss Moore at Assembly" (1993): parody of Marianne Moore
8 critics discuss Updike
Very, Jones (1813-1880), deeply religious Christian poet
Calvinism
New England Transcendentalism
"The Created" (1839), devotional poem: analysis
"On Visiting the Graves of Hawthorne and Thoreau" (1886)
Victorianism
Vollman, William T. (1959- ), Europe Central (2005), American Book Award
Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt (1922-2007): cynical hip Postmodernist fantasy writer very popular
Introduction to Vonnegut
87 quotations:
profundities, literary education, Political Correctness, utopian primitivism, vegetarianism,
people suck, pacifism, America is evil, Marxism, atheism, Postmodernism, women, writing,
popularity, prophecies, confessions
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
Slaughterhouse Five (1969): review by Michael Crichton
Walker, Alice (1944- ), black "womanist" poet & fiction writer focused on oppression
Introduction to Walker
Ethnic Fiction
"To Hell with Dying" (1967), great story of black transcendence: analysis
"Everyday Use" (1973), perhaps her most popular story
In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (1973)
The Color Purple (1982), National Book Award: race, lesbianism, and self-pity
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), essays
Wallace, David Foster (1962-2008): Postmodernist suicide was called the voice of his generation,
MacArthur Fellowship, Aga Khan Prize
172 quotations of Wallace:
autobiographical, maturation, loneliness, crisis, appearance, addiction, Americans, 1960s
counterculture, hedonism, adolescence, popular culture, masks of his generation, fear of being
human, children of the me generation, Postmodern education, intellectual pride, teaching
literature, critical theory, Postmodern sophists, purpose of education, thinking, Postmodern
fiction, solipsism, ironic detachment, hostility to the reader, sucking up, commercial cool,
hip ennui, Postmodernists of 1950s-60s, literary orphans, bad Postmodern writing, metafiction,
minimalism, end of Postmodernism, bureaucracy, anarchism, politics, conservatism, liberals,
Political Correctness, Feminism, trying to love, orgasm, God, Infinite Jest, summing up, art,
good writing, magical art, redemptive Realism, the new fiction, advice, death.
Postmodernism: Academic Expressionism
Infinite Jest (1996): analysis by 2 critics
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999), essays and stories
Warren, Robert Penn (1905-1989): Southern poet, fiction writer, New Critic, only writer to win Pulitzers in
both fiction and poetry
Introduction to Warren
14 quotations
All the King's Men (1946), death of politician Huey Long, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 14 critics
Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 (1957), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1967)
Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978 (1978), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
15 critics discuss Warren
Welch, James (1940-2003), Blackfoot Indian novelist, Winter in the Blood (1974): review
The Death of Jim Loney (1979): review
Fools Crow (1986), historical novel about last stand of the Blackfeet: review
The Indian Lawyer (1990): review
Ethnic Fiction
Welty, Eudora (1909-2001): major Modernist short story writer & novelist
Introduction to Welty
56 quotations:
autobiographical, morality, egalitarian Realism, Modernism, Katherine Anne Porter, Hemingway,
Faulkner, the grotesque, symbolism, plot, the short story, writing, the personal, style, politics,
Postmodernism, death.
Realism
Modernism
Welty in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
"A Memory" (1941), portrait of the artist as a young girl: analysis by 5 critics
"Powerhouse" (1941), great story with ironic black perspective: analysis by 2 critics
"The Petrified Man" (1941), critique of gender war: analysis by 5 critics
"A Piece of News" (1941): analysis by 2 critics
"Why I Live at the P.O." (1941), most popular for dialogue: analysis by 5 critics
"A Worn Path" (1941), one of the greatest stories ever written: analysis by 5 critics
"A Curtain of Green" (1941), deeply transcendental and powerful: analysis by 2 critics
The Robber Bridegroom (1942): analysis
Delta Wedding (1945): analysis by 4 critics
"The Wanderers" (1949): analysis
Modernist structure of Welty's collection The Golden Apples (1949), by Daniele Pitavy-Souques
The Ponder Heart (1954): analysis by 4 critics
"The Demonstrators" (1968), Civil Rights, O. Henry Award first prize: analysis
Losing Battles (1970): analysis by 4 critics
The Optimist's Daughter (1972): analysis by 5 critics
The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (1982), National Book Award
35 critics discuss Welty
West, Nathanael (1904-1940): cynical apocalyptic vision of the grotesque
Introduction to West
"Funny as a Crutch: Nathanael West" (2003), analyses by Elizabeth Hardwick
Precursor of Postmodernism
American literary novels about Hollywood
The Dream Life of Balso Snell (1931): analysis by Randall Reid
Miss Lonelyhearts (1933), columnist for lovelorn is cynical yet Christ-evoking: analysis by 5 critics
A Cool Million (1934): analysis
The Day of the Locust (1939), best 20th-c. Hollywood novel--pre-Postmodernist: analysis by chapter
7 critics discuss The Day of the Locust
The Day of the Locust film adaptation by Communist Waldo Salt (1974): review
25 critics discuss West
Wharton, Edith (1862-1937): major Realist and master of irony
Introduction to Wharton
"Mrs. Wharton in New York" (1988), Elizabeth Hardwick
60 quotations:
autobiographical, life, men and women, woman, love, compatibility, society, America, Europe,
writing, Realism, originality, politics, critics, classics, old age.
Neoclassicism
Realism
Naturalism
Impressionism
Wharton in historical survey of the short story by Stegner
The House of Mirth (1905), classic, Lily Bart tries to rise in New York society: analysis by chapter
The House of Mirth film adaptation by Terence Davies (2000): analysis
Ethan Frome (1911), Naturalism in rural New England, intro by Wharton quoted: analysis by 8 critics
The Age of Innocence (1920), upper class manners in old NY, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 6 critics
"Roman Fever" (1934), classic short story with great irony: analysis
Wharton describes Henry James asking directions: humor
Wharton on parodies of James
35 critics discuss Wharton
Wheatley, Phillis (1753-1784): first distinguished black American poet
Neoclassicism
"On being brought from Africa to America" (1773)
White, E. B. (1899-1985): popular children's book writer, co-author of The Elements of Style
56 quotations:
childhood, literary education, life, career, people, humor, free speech, writing, writers, literature,
genius, critics, prejudice, politics, the world, the future, old age, advice.
Whitehead, Colson (1969- ), black novelist from Harvard with super-prestigious MacArthur Fellowship
Introduction to Whitehead
Expressionism
Ethnic Fiction
The Underground Railroad (2016), National Book Award & Pulitzer Prize: review
The Nickel Boys (2020), Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Whitman, Walt (1819-1892): the bard of American democracy
Introduction to Whitman
180 quotations:
"Myself" as humanity, ego, self-reliance, freedom, individualism, equality, nature, body and soul,
sex, animals, pastoralism, grass, Puritanism, individuation, transcendent consciousness, miracles,
time, America, Democracy, government, politics, westward movement, Manifest Destiny, the
open road, progress, Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, truth, parenthood, justice, morality, simplicity,
literature, Leaves of Grass, censorship, organized religion, Postmodernism, God, optimism,
immortality, death, epitaph:
Romanticism
Transcendentalism
Nature in American literature
sexuality of Whitman: 7 critics discuss
Whitman reviews lecture by Emerson on "The Poet" (1844)
Whitman discusses Leaves of Grass (1855)
"Song of Myself" (1855): analysis by 12 critics
humor from "Song of Myself": quotations
Emerson letter to Whitman (1855)
Thoreau visits Whitman (1856)
"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (1856): analysis by 4 critics
"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" (1859): analysis by 5 critics
Whitman walks with Emerson (1860)
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865): analysis by 8 critics
"Passage to India" (1871): analysis by 6 critics
Whitman evaluates Poe (1880)
the structure of Leaves of Grass (1881): analysis
"Walt Whitman" (c.1910), Edwin Arlington Robinson
"A Pact," with Walt Whitman (1916), Ezra Pound
"After Walt Whitman" (c.1874-1936), parody by G. K. Chesterton
38 critics discuss Whitman
Wideman, John Edgar (1941- ), prolific black fiction writer, MacArthur Fellow (1993), many awards,
first to win two PEN/Faulkner awards: metafiction, complex experimental style, black subjects
Introduction to Wideman
Ethnic Fiction
Postmodernism
Sent for You Yesterday (1981), PEN/Faulkner Award
The Homewood Trilogy (1985), based on autobiography
Philadelphia Fire (1990), tragic racial bombing in 1985, PEN/Faulkner Award
Wilbur, Richard (1921-2017), "Epistemology" (1950)
"Mind" (1956)
"Marginalia" (1956)
"Altitudes" (1956): homage to Emily Dickinson
Things of This World (1957), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Seed Leaves" (1964): homage to Robert Frost
Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1971)
New and Collected Poems (1989), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Richard Wilbur's Faberge Egg Factory" (1986): parody by Clive James
Wilder, Thornton (1897-1975): underestimated dramatist and novelist wrote Our Town
Introduction to Wilder
73 quotations:
autobiographical, Modernist literary influences, politics, freedom, Americans, literature,
the theater, artsy Americans, criticism, writing, style, his works, Nature, pastoralism,
human nature, money, animals, consciousness, love, marriage, suffering, aim high, death,
Faith, immortality.
Neoclassicism
Existentialism
Realism
Expressionism
Modernism
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), religious predestination, Pulitzer Prize: analysis by 6 critics
Heaven's My Destination (1935), comic satirical novel: analysis by 3 critics
Our Town (1938), the most American play: analysis by 8 critics
The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), Expressionist historical allegory: analysis by 5 critics
The Ides of March (1948), novel of ancient Rome: analysis by 2 critics
The Alcestiad, or Life in the Sun (1955), play: analysis
The Eighth Day (1963), National Book Award
20 critics discuss Wilder
Williams, Tennessee (1911-1983): best American dramatist after O'Neill and Wilder
Introduction to Williams
103 quotations:
autobiographical, the 1930s, politics, religion, human nature, confession, life, Existentialism,
morality, gallantry and grace, women, sex, love, cages, the theater, art, writing, symbolism,
Expressionism, Modernism, characters, basic theme, success, other writers, Postmodernism,
old age, death.
Modernism
Expressionism
Postmodernism
The Glass Menagerie (1945), fragile girl breaks: analysis by 8 critics
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), New Orleans working class tragedy: analysis by 7 critics
The Rose Tattoo (1950): analysis by 2 critics
Camino Real (1953), best play was commercial failure, Modernist expressionism: analysis
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), patriarchal southern family Realism: analysis by 4 critics
Night of the Iguana (1961), Postmodern decadence in Mexico: commentary
Faulkner evaluates Williams (1957)
21 critics discuss Williams
Williams, William Carlos (1883-1963), influential free verse "objectivist" poet: "No ideas but in things."
Introduction to Williams
46 quotations:
poetic ideal, free verse, language, Ezra Pound, reading, Imagism, objectivism, imagination,
writing, measure, poems, the classic, poets, women, love, capitalism, skepticism, time,
"Prufrock," "The Waste Land," Library of Congress, a man is a city, Paterson.
Imagism
Modernism
"Red Wheelbarrow" (c.1913): analysis by 3 critics
"Poem, or, Spring and All" (1923): analysis by 4 critics
"The Yachts" (1938): analysis by 2 critics
Paterson I-V (1946-58): analysis by 4 critics
Selected Poems (1950), National Book Award
"The Basis of Faith in Art" (1954), by Williams
"For William Carlos Williams" (1960), by Galway Kinnell
Pictures from Brueghal (1963), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
"Understanding Poetry, by William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens" (1987),
by William Stafford
"To William Carlos Williams" (1988), by Richard Eberhart
"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" (2005), by Kenneth Koch: parody
"The Influence of William Carlos Williams" (2009), poem by Michael J. Bugeja
24 critics discuss Williams
Wilson, Harriet E. (1825-1900), Our Nig (1859), first novel by a black American woman: commentary by 2
Winters, Yvor (1900-1968), very influential Neoclassical Modernist poet, moralist, theorist, and New Critic
promoted women poets, discovered J. V. Cunningham, N. Scott Momaday, Thom Gunn & others
Introduction to Winters
Poetry as moral statement (1937), Winters: excerpts
Neoclassicism
Imagism
Modernism
"The Mule Corral" (1921): analysis
"To a Young Writer" (1930): analysis
"To Emily Dickinson" (1931): analysis
"The Slow Pacific Swell" (1931): analysis by 3 critics
"The Journey, Snake River Country" (1931): analysis
"Before Disaster" (1932-33): analysis by 3 critics
"Dedication for a Book of Criticism" (1934): analysis by 2 critics
"On Teaching the Young" (1934): analysis by 2 critics
"A Testament to One Now a Child" (1937): analysis by 3 critics
"To a Portrait of Melville in My Library" (1937): analysis
"To the Holy Spirit" (1946): analysis by 4 critics
Edwin Arlington Robinson (1946): valuable insights of a comparable poet
"An Ode on the Despoilers of Learning in an American University 1947 (1947)
In Defense of Reason (1947), three volumes of literary criticism
Collected Poems (1952): influenced by Imagism
The Function of Criticism: Problems and Exercises (1957)
Collected Poems, revised and expanded (1960): Bollingen Prize for Poetry (1960)
"The Brink of Darkness" (1965), his only short story: analysis by 2 critics
Forms of Discovery (1967)
Uncollected Essays (1973)
"To Yvor Winters" (1955), Thom Gunn (British)
30 critics discuss Winters
Winthrop, John (1587-1649): led Puritans to New England in 1630
16 quotations from Journal (1636-38), featuring the trial of Anne Hutchinson:
love, liberty, Democracy, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Anne Hutchinson, acts of God,
parallel of Puritans to Israelites, life in the colony, snake in the meeting house!
Puritanism
Calvinism
Anne Hutchinson
Wister, Owen (1860-1938), The Virginian (1902), classic western: analysis by 5 critics
Wolfe, Thomas (1900-1938): verbose Romantic southern novelist popular with the young
Introduction to Wolfe
"The Torrents of Wolfe: Thomas Wolfe" (2000), Elizabeth Hardwick
Look Homeward, Angel (1929): analysis by 6 critics
Of Time and the River (1935): analysis by 4 critics
The Web and the Rock (1939): analysis by 3 critics
You Can't Go Home Again (1940): analysis by 3 critics
Wolfe to F. Scott Fitzgerald on economy in the novel (1937)
22 critics discuss Wolfe
Wolfe, Tom (1930-2018) popular conservative journalist and novelist with flamboyant early style
Hip Pastoralism
Postmodernism: Countercultural Fiction
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), satire of Ken Kesey's hip prankster bus trip: analysis
Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), indictment of Political Correctness was filmed: analysis
"Women Writers" in the 19th century: anecdote
Women's fiction before the Civil War: Feminist critics quoted
Victorianism
Wood, Sally (1897-1985): writer, translator, editor, nurse, friend and consultant to Caroline Gordon
Murder of a Novelist (1941): detective novel
Death in Lord Byron's Room (1948): detective novel
Editor, The Southern Mandarins: Letters of Caroline Gordon to Sally Wood, 1924-1937 (1984)
Woolf, Virginia (1882-1941): British Modernist on transcending gender (1929): quotation
Influence on feminism in American literature: transcendental feminism
Woolman, John (1720-1772): mystical Quaker & anti-slavery crusader
pastoralism
transcendentalism
The Journal of John Woolman, 1720-72 (1774): vision of divine light
Wright, James (1927-1980), Collected Poems (1972), Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Wright, Richard (1908-1960): first major black American novelist
Introduction to Wright
Naturalism
Native Son (1940), landmark expression of black rage: analysis by 8 critics
William Faulkner encourages Richard Wright (1945)
11 critics discuss Wright
Wylie, Elinor (1885-1928), "Puritan Sonnet": analysis
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