America’s Coming-of-Age (Masterplots, Definitive Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Van Wyck Brooks
- First Published: 1915
- Type of Work: Literary criticism
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction
- Subjects: Culture, United States or Americans, Intellectuals, Authors or writers, Literature, Writing, Democracy
Critical Evaluation:
Virtually from the beginning of the American republic our writers have uttered a consistent complaint and issued a consistent call. They have complained of the inhospitable atmosphere of American life to literary creativity, and they have called for a national literature equal to the country’s great material accomplishments.
Thus in the year after Emerson had declared in “The American Scholar” that the time was ripe for us to establish our cultural independence from Europe, James Fenimore Cooper in THE AMERICAN DEMOCRAT spoke harshly of...
[The entire page is 1901 words long]
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