Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Cozzens, James Gould (Vol. 92) - Robert Scholes (essay date 1979)

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Robert Scholes (essay date 1979)

SOURCE: "Moral Realism: The Development of an Attitude," in James Gould Cozzens: New Acquist of True Experience, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, Southern Illinois University Press, 1979, pp. 44-62.

[Scholes is an educator and author of several books on literature, including Elements of Fiction (1968) and Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English (1985). In the following essay, he discusses the evolution of Cozzens's literary style and his rejection of romanticism in favor of moral realism.]

The following quotations may be read as a dialogue. The first speaker is a young man in a novel of 1929. The second is an old man in a novel of 1942.

That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. George J. Becker (review date June 1949)
   2. Martin Price (review date Autumn 1957)
   3. Benjamin De Mott (essay date Winter 1957)
   4. Richard G. Stern (review date Winter 1958)
   5. Frederick Bracher (essay date 1959)
   6. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 6 May 1965)
   7. John Brooks (review date 25 August 1968)
   8. John Updike (review date 2 November 1968)
   9. The Times Literary Supplement (review date 30 January 1969)
   10. James A. Epperson (review date 8 December 1978)
   11. Robert Scholes (essay date 1979)
   12. Colin S. Cass (essay date Fall 1981)
   13. Irving Malin (essay date Winter 1981)
   14. Terry Teachout (review date 28 February 1986)
   15. Richard A. Posner (essay date 1988)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright