AN AMERICAN PROCESSIONAn American Procession is a study, on the largest scale, of the major American writers at work during the historically and literarily crucial century that began in the early 1830s, when Ralph Waldo Emerson founded a national literature on the basis of a metaphysical revolution, and ended on the eve of the 1930s with the triumph of modernism and the critical recognition of the “postponed power” of those who had been modern before their time. These one hundred years encompassed a period of unprecedented expansion and promise in the United States, and the work of our novelists, essayists, poets, and historians was the mirror of the nation’s spirit. The thirty years preceding the Civil War produced the transcendental idealism of Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman and the dark romanticism of Hawthorne, Poe, and Melville. In the years just after World War I, modernism reached its exemplary form in the work of Eliot, Pound, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Fitzgerald, and between the two wars emerged the great realists: Mark Twain, Henry James, Crane, and Dreiser. It is through an exploration of the lives and works of these writers—together with Emily Dickinson, William James, Henry Adams, and Faulkner—that Kazin maps out a great literary procession shaped by individual genius, by history, and by the implacable American sense of self. With each writer, Alfred Kazin illuminates for us the work, the influences that informed it, and its influence on the work of others. Each figure seems revitalized for us by Kazin’s acuity and powerful sympathy for his subject. An American Procession, with its intellectual energy, its clarity and breadth, is the brilliantly executed capstone of Kazin’s already illustrious career and will stand as the most important study of American literature in our time. |
Contents
Emerson | |
Emerson | |
Thoreau | |
Hawthorne and | |
Whitman to Lincoln | |
PART | |
Mark Twain | |
The James Country | |
Dreiser Adams Mark Twain | |
Stephen Crane | |
HISTORY AND THE MODERNS 1 9001 929 | |
Henry Adams | |
Eliot and Pound | |
An American Tragedy and The Sound and the Fury | |
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Common terms and phrases
Adams’s American Tragedy artist became become believe called century character Chicago church Civil Clyde Concord consciousness Crane death democracy Dickinson dream Dreiser Education Eliot Emerson England Europe everything Ezra Pound famous fascinated father Faulkner feel felt fiction Fitzgerald Gatsby genius God’s Hawthorne Hawthorne’s Hemingway Hemingway’s Henry Adams Henry James Howells Huck Huckleberry Finn human Hurstwood images imagination influence intellectual James’s John knew Leaves of Grass letters Lincoln literary literature lived man’s Mark Twain Melville Melville’s mind Moby-Dick modern moral nature never novel novelist one’s passion Passos perfect poem poet poetry political Pound reader reflected religion Sawyer scene Scott Fitzgerald seemed sense Sister Carrie social society soul Specimen Days Stephen Crane story style T. S. Eliot things Thoreau thought Tom Sawyer tradition turned Walden Waste Land Whitman word writing wrote York young