The Literature of the American Realistic Period [antikvár]

Preface Like its companion volumes, The Literature of the American Realistic Period is organized according to genre. The objective of this method of organization is to encourage an approach to American literature which is primarily literary, thus enabling the college instructor to deal with the selections first as literature and then, if he wishes, to proceed to their social and historical importance. Within each of the five sections, however, the selections are arranged chronologically, so as to illustrate the evolution of individual literary forms and still allow classroom coverage of the historical, social and intellectual developments of the "Realistic" period. In compiling an anthology it is difficult to delineate a literary period with absolute dates for the obvious reason that trends and movements in literature to not begin and end at single and easily determined moments. As we look back to the period covered in this volume, it is apparent that much of the work of Dreiser belongs with that of earlier writers like Crane and the Naturalists, rather than with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Arthur Miller, or Tennessee Williams. Similarly, the fiction of Sherwood Anderson, which grew largely out of the earlier agrarian protest against industrialism, is closer to the more regional works of Twain than to the cosmopolitan works of Hemingway — though the connection with Hemingway is apparent enough. Generally, we have tried to make 1920 the cutofi point, for that year, the first in a decade that saw the second Renaissance of American literature, is properly the starting place for the final volume in this series. Again, however, this closing date has its exceptions. The critical conflict between