The Natural | Techniques/Literary Precedents
From all of the allusions and analogies Malamud has used in The Natural, it is clear that he deliberately constructed his novel to reflect the mythic rituals of the Grail quest, as embodied in earlier literature of Arthurian legend, which many critics have noted, particularly Earl R. Wasserman in an important, well-documented essay. Baseball stories of course abound, and Philip Roth's The Great American Novel (1973) is just one among many. Less obvious and hitherto unremarked is the affinity The Natural has to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925),...
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