Showing papers in "American Literature in 1948"

A Grammar of Motives.

Abstract: Introduction Part One: Ways of Placement I. CONTAINER AND THING CONTAINED II. ANTINOMIES OF DEFINITION III. SCOPE AND REDUCTION Part Two: The Philosophic Schools I. SCENE II. AGENT IN GENERAL III. ACT IV. AGENCY AND PURPOSE Part Three: On Dialectic I. THE DIALECTIC OF CONSTITUTIONS II. DIALECTIC IN GENERAL Appendix Index

Psychical Research and "The Turn of the Screw"

Abstract: READERS OF HIS letters and Prefaces will recall that Henry James ascribed the germinal idea of "The Turn of the Screw" to an anecdote told him by Edward White Benson, a fragment of a tale "dealing . .. with a couple of small children in an out-of-theway place, to whom the spirits of certain 'bad' servants, dead in the employ of the house, were believed to have appeared with the design of 'getting hold' of them."'1 Benson's death two years before the story was written precluded the chance of confirmation, but his sons have questioned the accuracy of the ascription. "My father took a certain interest in psychical matters," wrote A. C. Benson, "but we have never been able to recollect any story which could have provided a hint for so grim a tale."2 E. F. Benson was also present during James's visit to Addington, his father's house, in January, I895, the occasion on which the Archbishop is supposed to have related the anecdote. "But the odd thing," he remarks, "is that to all of us it ["The Turn of the Screw"] was absolutely new, and neither my mother, nor my brother nor I had the faintest recollection of any tale of my father's which resembled it."3 A recent investigator, Robert Lee Wolff, concludes that this testimony makes it "difficult to accept at face value James's account of the genesis of the story."4 Mr. Wolff finds a partial solution to the puzzle in a new source, a picture entitled "The Haunted House," published in the same number of an illustrated London review that contained one of James's earlier ghost stories. After adducing proof that James saw this picture, Mr. Wolff points out striking similarities between the details of the picture and of the story. He

Lafcadio Hearn: Interpreter of Japan

Abstract: IN A RECENT BIBLIOGRAPHY of books on Japan Lafcadio Hearn is described as "a famous writer . . who, more than anyone else, is responsible for the traditional romantic view of Japan."' Nearly two decades of Japanese military aggression in China and the Pacific have destroyed the romantic picture of the quaint, childlike Japanese, which has been superseded by the equally false view of the Japanese as subhuman barbarians. The labeling of Hearn's writings as "romantic" nullifies their value for the postwar reader, so that those who seek an accurate account of the development of modern Japan may be deterred from consulting Hearn's books on Japan. But, while it is true that Hearn sentimentalized and misrepresented certain aspects of Japanese culture, his works as a whole present a detailed and informative picture of Japan during the latter part of the Meiji Era. Hearn's colorful career, the history of an erratic and impulsive personality, has imparted an aura of romance to his writings on Japan, but he was not a mere rhapsodist over things Japanese. His love for Japan did not prevent him from being a clear-sighted reporter of Japanese customs, and, on occasion, a capable analyst of Japanese culture. It is unjust and misleading to view Hearn as a mere fabricator of exotic tales. One of his contemporaries, Basil Hall Chamberlain, Professor of Japanese Philology at Tokyo Imperial University, commended Hearn for his "scientific accuracy" as well as for his "brilliance of style."2 Even Japanese writers who have attacked the romantic view of Japan do not dismiss Hearn's work as completely invalid, although they believe that his picture of Japanese life is misleading.3 At the present time, despite the discrediting of the romantic view during World War II, Hearn's final and most com-

Myth and Humor in the Uncle Remus Fables

Abstract: THE FABLES OF Joel Chandler Harris are usually inconspicuously paged among other representatives of Southern localcolor literature; yet a little more than cursory examination will note in them an imaginative and dramatic vitality beside which other Southern local-color specimens wear the faded gentility of museum pieces. I should like to suggest here that their superiority lies not merely in the appeal of primitive fantasy, but also in both a mythic and a comic implication, as these record dimly apprehended but elemental human recognitions. The point may be rather of contemporary interest, because the last decade or so has witnessed the appropriation both of fairy tales and of a kind of native fabliau for the most popular modern art medium, the motion picture, where such material appears as the animated cartoons (it is not accidental that these are comics) and as such elaborate fantasy as the creations of Walt Disney. The psychological patterns by which a complex twentieth century finds amusement and escape in these ingenious depictions of brief, usually violent, escapades drawn from the worlds of the animal and the child may throw light upon the quality of the Uncle Remus fables, the latest, incidentally, to be accorded production. For if the child is indeed father to the man, it is equally probable that in the very naivete of this material lies an unsuspected profundity, even bordering upon the metaphysical. The accidental success of the fables is a textbook platitude-how, in I879, in the extemporizing spirit engendered by an emergency in the columns of the Atlanta Constitution, Harris wrote a little tale which was to become the first in a unique series. The simple story evoked such enthusiasm that, between i88o and I906, the series grew into six books, all centered about the mythopoeic character of a wise, lovable old Negro named Uncle Remus, who was a synthesis of four Negroes whom Harris had known when, a shy boy, he had found his early companionship, not among the members of his own

Whitman in 1850: Three Uncollected Articles

Abstract: N O PERIOD of Whitman's life is as fascinating and elusive to the critic and the student as the five years immediately preceding the first edition of Leaves of Grass. So little is known about Whitman's activities during these formative years that it has been impossible to prepare adequate biographical studies of the poet's development. As a contribution to our knowledge of Whitman in I850, this paper presents three letters to the National Era signed "Paumanok" and, in order to establish authorship, correlates these texts with others written by Whitman. Between I850 and I855 Whitman was sometimes housebuilder, sometimes journalist. The extent of his newspaper work remains indistinct, awaiting patient search through contemporary files, but what has been discovered shows the poet to be shrewd and original, so that further search should be rewarding. As a critic he revered naturalness in singing and painting, and simplicity in architecture, decrying the overornamented arts of Victorian America. In politics he was a liberal, and the fact that in I850 Whitman contributed to Gamaliel Bailey's abolitionist National Era, the paper which first printed Uncle Tom's Cabin, clarifies his statement that he "was then quite an 'abolitionist.""' Although the appearances of two of the three contributions have been previously recorded,2 the final one has been hitherto unnoted. None, as far as can be ascertained, has been considered in detail. All are presented without change in text.

Poe and the Beautiful Cigar Girl

Abstract: JN DECEMBER, I89I, and January, I892, a civil suit was tried in -the Supreme Court, New York County, before the Honorable Justice Edward Patterson and a jury, in which evidence was presented throwing light on one of the most widely publicized mysteries in the annals of our criminal law and involving a landmark of American literature, Poe's "Mystery of Marie Roget." Mrs. Laura V. Appleton, the plaintiff in this action, had no thought of reviving interest in an ancient "murder" case or adding a footnote to the history of American literature; but incidentally she did both things. The material, however, has been permitted to lie dormant for more than half a century in the official minutes taken on the trial. The suit which she brought, entitled Laura V. Appleton v. The New York Life Insurance Company and Frederick A. Hammond, may be technically described as an action in ejectment to recover an undivided one-fifth share or part of the Hotel Plaza in the City of New York. The land on which the Plaza stood had belonged to Mrs. Appleton's father, John Anderson, a wealthy and prominent citizen of Westchester County, New York. He had devised it under his will (as part of his residuary estate) to his only son, John Charles Anderson. The New York Life Insurance Company claimed title to the property through foreclosure of a mortgage thereon; and Hammond was in possession as the lessee. Mrs. Appleton sought to have her father's will declared null and void on the ground that he had been mentally incompetent when he executed it; and she, being one of five children, claimed the one-fifth share of his property, to which she would have been entitled if he had died intestate. Distinguished legal talent participated in the trial of this case. Colonel Edward C. James, of the firm of James, Schell and Elkus, then a leader of the New York bar, represented the plaintiff; Joseph H. Choate appeared for one defendant, The New York Life Insurance Company; and William B. Hornblower acted on behalf of the other defendant, Hammond.

Swinburne and American Literature: With Six Hitherto Unpublished Letters

Abstract: Cc ^ S TO THE CHARACTER of Americans generally," Swinburne once wrote to John H. Ingram, the biographer of Poe, "my own impression (confirmed by experience) is that they are either delightful or detestable-the best or the worst company possible-there is no medium."' Swinburne's recorded experience does not altogether corroborate his statement. The evidence that remains of his acquaintance with Americans seems to indicate that he found them rather delightful than otherwise. Swinburne's appreciation of American personality appears, in fact, to have been keener than his appreciation of American literature. He knew and liked Bayard Taylor, for example, and commended at least one of Taylor's poems.2 In Under the Microscope, published in I872, he mentioned "the true pathos of Bret Harte, the true passion of Joaquin Miller."3 We know that he was acquainted with both men.4 An insatiable novel reader, Swinburne included the novels of Francis Marion Crawford among those he liked and numbered Crawford among his friends.5 He once referred to Hawthorne as "the half man of genius who never could carry out an idea or work it through to the full result,"' but later implied that he considered The Scarlet Letter a "consummate piece of art."7 The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe was to Swinburne's mind Amer1 Jan. 9, 1875. See The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, ed. Sir Edmund Gosse and Thomas James Wise (20 vols.; London and New York, 1926-i927 [Bonchurch Edition]), XVIII, I69 (hereinafter cited as Works). 2 Life and Letters of Bayard Taylor, ed. Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder (2 vols.; Boston, 1884), II, 499. A letter from Taylor to Swinburne is printed by Thomas James Wise in The Ashley Library: A Catalogue of Printed Books, Manuscripts, and Autograph Letter-s (ii vols.; London, 1922-1936), VI, 130. W Works, XVI, 421. 'Thomas Hake and Arthur Compton-Rickett, The Life and Letters of Theodore VattsDunton (2 vols.; London, I9I6), I, II, 129. 'Clara Watts-Dunton, The Home Life of Swinburne (London, 2922), pp. 209-2 I6. oLetter to John H. Ingram, Jan. 9, I875, Works, XVIII, I69. Letter to Thomas Purnell, Jan. 27, i877, Works, XVIII2 270.

Social Criticism of Europe in the Fiction of N. P. Willis

Abstract: DURING HIS SHORT stay in London in I835, Longfellow met a fellow-Portlander whose orbit, as Longfellow facetiously remarked, was "high among the stars and garters of the fashionable zodiac.' This was Nathaniel Parker Willis, European foreign correspondent of the New York Mirror, then famous for his chatty letters from abroad. After a leisurely ramble through the continent of Europe and the Near East, with extended stays in France and above all in Italy, Willis had gone to England, where he remained for almost two years, returning to the United States in May, I836. For close to five years, his news letters, later published as a book entitled Pencillings by the Way, fed the hunger of his countrymen for impressions of Europe; and Willis went down in history as a dashing young journalist charmed by and charming the European world of fashion-a portrait which, though partly true, must be considerably touched up when his fiction is given the consideration it deserves. There was in Willis a good deal of the romantic pilgrim made fashionable by Irving. In Avignon, to mention only a few among numerous examples, he paid his respects to the memory of Petrarch; in Verona he thought of Romeo and Juliet; in Lucca of Caesar on the point of crossing the Rubicon.2 But near the Mediterranean, Childe Harold was uppermost in his mind; in fact, the "Pencillings" from the Mediterranean countries often look as if Willis had conscientiously followed Byron's tracks. "These romantic countries," Willis felt, could not be separated from "the characters with which poetry or history once peopled them"; and to visit the famous spots

Young Henry James, Critic

Abstract: THE REVIVAL of interest in the critical work of Henry James, evident in the recent publication of two discriminating selections from his reviews and essays,1 has been long overdue. Heretofore, too few of us have been familiar with the great body of criticism which came from his prolific pen, particularly in his earlier years.2 Even fewer of us have taken the time to give it the study and analysis it deserves.3 In the failure to do so we have been guilty of an oversight, for James's earlier critical writings are important. For the student of James they have a value beyond weighing. In embryonic form they hold the theories which produced James's later narrative techniques. The idea of the "germ," for instance, makes its first appearance something more than forty years before the Prefaces;4

Critical Tendencies in Richard Grant White's Shakespeare Commentary

Abstract: HE PROGRESS OF RECENT scholarship into the history of American criticism has opened up many facets of an interesting and exhaustive subject-interesting both for its own sake and as an index to the intellectual character of America. One tributary to this subject which deserves to be explored in its relation to the larger field and as a study in comparative cultures is the history of American Shakespeare criticism.' More than any other single literary figure, Shakespeare has become a sort of perennial barometer of critical taste and opinion. In the varying attitudes and philosophical commentary of American literary men and professional Shakespeare critics, the scholar may find a new and unified approach to the subject of American criticism as a whole. Moreover, by placing the American against the background of European Shakespeare criticism, one may come to see more clearly some of the distinguishing qualities of the American critics. The present case in point is Richard Grant White, one of the greatest of the American editors of Shakespeare. White has usually been regarded as a textual scholar and as such his work has been highly ranked in American letters.2 But the fact that he wrote a considerable body of interpretive criticism of Shakespeare and that he espoused ideas and points of view significant of a shift in the