Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920)

Carl Van Doren

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) by Carl Van DorenThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online atwww.gutenberg.netTitle: Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920)Author: Carl Van DorenRelease Date: June 8, 2004 [EBook #12563]Language: English*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVELISTS ***Produced by Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVELISTS1900-1920BYCARL VAN DOREN1922ToFREDA KIRCHWEYPREFACEThe American Novel, published last year, undertook to trace the progress of a literary type in the United States from itsbeginnings to the end of the nineteenth century; Contemporary American Novelists undertakes to study the type as ithas existed during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Readers of both volumes may note that in this latervolume criticism has tended to supplant history. Only in writing of dead authors can the critic feel that any considerableportion of his task is done when he has arranged them in what he thinks their proper categories and their trueperspective. In the case of living authors he has regularly to remember that he works with shifting materials, with figureswhose dimensions and importance may be changed by ...

Informations

• Publié par: omka
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 61
• Langue: English

Extrait

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BY

CARL VAN DOREN

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVELISTS

1900-1920

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN NOVELISTS ***

Title: Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) Author: Carl Van Doren Release Date: June 8, 2004 [EBook #12563] Language: English

FREDA KIRCHWEY

Produced by Ted Garvin, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

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The American Novel beginnings to the end of the nineteenth century; Contemporary American Novelists undertakes to study the type as it has existed during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Readers of both volumes may note that in this later volume criticism has tended to supplant history. Only in writing of dead authors can the critic feel that any considerable portion of his task is done when he has arranged them in what he thinks their proper categories and their true perspective. In the case of living authors he has regularly to remember that he works with shifting materials, with figures whose dimensions and importance may be changed by growth, with persons who may desert old paths for new, reveal unsuspected attributes, increase or fade with the mere revolutions of time. All he can expect to do in dealing with any current type as fluid as the novel, is, seizing upon it at some specific moment, to examine the intentions and successes of outstanding or typical individuals and to make the most accurate report possible concerning them. Whatever general tendency there may be ought to appear from his examination. The general tendency appearing most clearly among the novelists here studied is, of course, the drift of naturalism: initiated a full generation ago by several restless spirits, of whom E.W. Howe and Hamlin Garland are the most conspicuous survivors; continued by those young geniuses Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Jack London, all dead before their time, and by Theodore Dreiser, Robert Herrick, Upton Sinclair, happily still alive; given a fresh impulse during the shaken years of the war and of the recovery from war by such satirists as Edgar Lee Masters and Sinclair Lewis and their companions in the new revolt. The intelligent American fiction of the century has to be studied—so far as the novel is concerned—largely in terms of its agreement or its disagreement with this naturalistic tendency, which has been powerful enough to draw Winston Churchill and Booth Tarkington into an approach to its practices, to drive James Branch Cabell and Joseph Hergesheimer into explicit dissent, and to throw into strong relief the balanced independence of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. The year 1920, marking a peak in the triumph of one or two species of naturalism and in some ways closing a chapter, affords an admirable occasion to take stock. This book, indeed, was planned and begun at the close of that year and has firmly resisted the temptation to do more than glance at most of the work produced since then—even at the price of giving what must seem insufficient notice to The Triumph of the Egg and Three Soldiers and of giving none at all to that still more recent masterpiece Cytherea . While criticism pauses to take stock, creation steadily goes on. Acknowledgments are due The Nation   already been published there.

CARL VAN DOREN.

PREFACE

March, 1922.

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CONTENTS

I OLD STYLE

1. Local Color 2. Romance

II ARGUMENT

1. Hamlin Garland 2. Winston Churchill 3. Robert Herrick 4. Upton Sinclair 5. Theodore Dreiser

III ART

1. Booth Tarkington 2. Edith Wharton 3. James Branch Cabell 4. Willa Cather 5. Joseph Hergesheimer

IV NEW STYLE

1. Emergent Types

Ellen Glasgow, William Allen White, Ernest Poole, Henry B. Fuller, Mary Austin, Immigrants.

2. The Revolt from the Village

Edgar Lee Masters, Sherwood Anderson, E.W. Howe, Sinclair Lewis, Zona Gale, Floyd Dell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Canfield, 1921.

CONT

EMPORARY AMERICAN NOVELIST

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1. LOCAL COLOR

CHAPTER I OLD STYLE

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