American Literature didn't really kick off until the latter part of the 19th century and there's a distinct lack of women involved. I'm afraid I have to give it to us Brits
American Literature didn't really kick off until the latter part of the 19th century and there's a distinct lack of women involved. I'm afraid I have to give it to us Brits
I guess I wonder by your statements what you intention was in "innocence" and "catchup with the British"? These and your statement regarding "that kind of work" in regard to Thackery seem a bit vague to me. I wonder if you could clarify your point. At this moment I am a bit confounded, as these statements almost seem to reflect a more Eurocentic tone than one from an American literary perspective. Please do elucidate your comments for me.Originally Posted by Vavasor
To clarify my own point, if that helps, I was stating that British poetry stagnated in the 19th century, fixating on formal verse, and creating little innovation in the field for almost a century. You can see it easily when you compare the brief works of Hart Crane to W.H. Auden or W.B. Yeats, all contemporaries . . . though one's life was shatteringly short. Again, Auden was alive and still considered at his full height when both the New York School and the Beat poets were creating two very distinct voices in American poetry far from Auden's Christ Church . . . that's not even to mention Jazz forms developed in Harlem, which came about in his younger years. But, also, you can see it in the mid-nineteenth-century with comparisons between the Brownings or G.M. Hopkins and Whitman. The contrast in style, in form,, language, and philosophy is so very different and innovative.
Please, tell me what early and mid 19th century American Literature you have read?American Literature didn't really kick off until the latter part of the 19th century and there's a distinct lack of women involved. I'm afraid I have to give it to us Brits
Interesting.
Chalk & Cheese. George was a first class novelist with no reputation for poetry, T.S. vice versa (if he *is* a first class poet:-) For myself, I much prefer George to T.S.
I just tried re-reading "the Rainbow" and had to give up, although I managed to get through "Sons and Lovers" (just). I think it's now generally accepted that Lawrence is nowhere near the class of Dickens, George Eliot, Austen... I agree with that estimation. All that mystico-sexuality gets very tedious... So doing better than Lawrwence isn't "all that". David Lodge, amongst several other modern Brits, does better than Lawrence IMHO...
It doesn't really interest me as a period so I've only read just over half of Moby Dick and a bit of The Scarlett Letter. Both of them are good works but they belong to the mid/second half of the 19th century (I think they're both circa 1850). I don't think I've read any early 19th century American literature-the only name I can think of is Poe.
When critics discuss American classics, they tend to mention works which are post mid-19th century. The earliest contender for Great American Novel would probably be Moby Dick.
Did you also find it a bit redundant, as if Lawrence were attempting to batter you over the head with the subject matter? That is how I found "Lady Chatterley's Lover"
Yes, the white whale, that it is . . . or at least I cannot name an earlier contender. I can name some classic earlier works, however: The Leather Stocking Tales (e.g. "The Last of the Mohicans") by James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving's short stories and essays including "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle". Also, Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thorough, and James Russell Lowell were published in the earlier part of the 1800's.
This is a stupid thread ....
You don't read Chaucer and Shakespeare and not read Poe and Hawthrne. You don't read Melville and Twain and give up Dickens and Thackeray. You read the best of both nations, including the American Declaration of Idependence.
I cannot disagree with that statement, but how often are different texts read outside their own cultures I wonder? I have read all the above at one point-- some assigned, some not. But I wonder to what extent certain writings in one culture are perceived as important in another. Not a question that is readily answerable, as it would differ between cultures. But interesting.
The idea of such a comparison is absurd. The United States does not really begin to become a nation of any real cultural influence until the late 19th early 20th century. In spite of this, the US has certainly churned out more than a few literary artists of real merit: Whitman, Dickinson, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Twain, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, W.C. Williams, e.e. cummings, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Elizabeth Bishop, Nathaniel West, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Flannery O'Conner, John Barth, Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, etc... How would British literature just some 200 years after the Viking settlement... or even after the Norman Invasion have compared? The US is an incredibly young nation by European and Asian standards... and yet American culture has also produced the Hollywood film industry, Jazz, Rock-n-Roll, Bluegrass, and become a leading figure in literature, classical music, architecture, and the visual arts. It would seem that the notion of an American Renaissance or even an American Century is not empty hyperbole.
And I say this as one far more enamored of European culture and art.
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I guess you have to find out what the currently acceptable geographical term is for the little group of islands at the north-west corner of Europe, and use that.
I haven't read Crane but I agree with your estimation of Norris as a potential American literary giant comparable to the European naturalists of the period. His early death is one of US literature's greatest tragedies. Mcteague is wonderful writing and the first two books of his unfinished trilogy The Octopus and The Pit are brilliant descriptions of one facet of US capitalism; it is a personal regret that I'm unable to read the last of them. I would certainly rate him as important as Sinclair Lewis. The real tragedy of Frank Norris is that, judging by how infrequently he is mentioned on this forum, he seems to have been neglected by readers supposedly interested in literary merit.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
American Literature is more diverse.
British Literature is more dense, complex, and poetic (i.e. Vanity Fair).
"We look at the world, at governments, across the spectrum, some with more freedom, some with less. And we observe that the more repressive the State is, the closer life under it resembles Death. If dying is deliverance into a condition of total non-freedom, then the State tends, in the limit, to Death. The only way to address the problem of the State is with counter-Death, also known as Chemistry." -- Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day
You'll have to pardon me, but I am going to have to disagree with that statement. It is far too general to accurately fit the literary forms of either nation.
You talk about Norris, but poor Edith Wharton is never mentioned at all despite her great literary prowess. "The Age of Innocence", "Ethan Frome", "Summer", "The House of Mirth". She was definitely an expert on the gilded age, an adept navigator of the moral shoals which bridged the way between Victorian and Modern society, and a writer as vivid in her depictions on the Astor 400 as the everyday New England villager.
Agree with dfloyd, this is a very silly topic. I think American and British literature should each pick one champion and settle it with a decision based on zombie kumite.
On the contrary, it's a very sensible and valid issue, and should be debated thoroughly. When we've finished here, I shall open a new thread of similar importance entitled The White Cliffs of Dover vs The Appalachians.
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