Description
Book Synopsis“Nobody ever read [the great old books] like Lawrence did—as madly, as wildly or as insightfully. . . . You will be jolted awake.” —A. O. Scott, The New York TimesA Penguin ClassicLawrence asserted that 'the proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it'. In these highly individual, penetrating essays he has exposed 'the American whole soul' within some of that continent's major works of literature. In seeking to establish the status of writings by such authors as Poe, Melville, Fenimore Cooper and Whitman, Lawrence himself has created a classic work. Studies in Classic American Literature is valuable not only for the light it sheds on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American consciousness, telling 'the truth of the day', but also as a prime example of Lawrence's learning, passion and integrity of judgement.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of class
Trade Review“Nobody ever read [the great old books] like Lawrence did—as madly, as wildly or as insightfully. . . . With its one-sentence paragraphs (“Flop goes spiritual love.”), jabbing exclamations (“Freedom!”), semi-rhetorical questions (“But what of Walt Whitman?”) and heavy use of italics and all-caps, the book can read like a scroll of social-media rants. Its manner is neither respectable nor respectful. . . . Lawrence’s bristling, inflamed, impertinent language provides a reminder that criticism is not just the work of the brain, but of the gut and the spleen as well. The intellectual refinement of his argument—fine-grained evaluations of style and form that still startle with their incisiveness; breathtaking conceptual leaps from history to myth and back again—is unthinkable without the churn of instinct and feeling beneath it. . . . You will be jolted awake.” —
A. O. Scott, The New York TimesTable of Contents1. The Spirit of Place
2. Benjamin Franklin
3. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
4. Fenimore Cooper's White Novels
5. Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Novels
6. Edgar Allan Poe
7. Nathaniel Hawthorne and
The Scarlet Letter8. Hawthorne's
Blithedale Romance9. Dana's
Two Years Before the Mast10. Herman Melville's
Typee and
Omoo11. Herman Melville's
Moby Dick12. Whitman
