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The New Realism and a National Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Benjamin T. Spencer
Benjamin T. Spencer*
Affiliation:
Ohio Wesleyan University
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Extract

By the middle of the nineteenth century the controversy over the possibility and desirability of a national American literature had diminished to a somewhat feeble reiteration of old pros and cons. Moreover, Whitman's vigorous renewal of the demand for a distinctly national literature in his 1855 Preface to Leaves of Grass went virtually unnoticed by reason of his own obscurity and the disruption of national unity by sectional disputes. In the upsurge of nationalistic optimism following the Civil War, however, in the promises afforded by a strong and humanitarian Union, the sentiment for a literature distinct through its expression of the new national idealism was both widespread and ardent. But this post-war literary nationalism was short-lived. Before the skeptical attacks of many literary critics and the rising materialism of the Gilded Age, hope for a national literature once more gave way to indifference or despair. If the controversy was to be revived, some new literary stimulus, some new mode or approach toward the achievement of an American literature would have to be forthcoming. Such a stimulus was provided in the rise of realism. The conflict between the new realism and the old romanticism in the 1870's and 1880's is a well-known chapter in the history of American criticism, but the relationship of this new realism to the production of a national literature as it was viewed in the two decades before Whitman's death has not received adequate attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 1941 , pp. 1116 - 1132
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

1 Cf. B. T. Spencer, “A National Literature, 1837-1855,” American Literature, viii (1936), 155–159.

2 Cf. e.g., Whitman, Complete Writings, ed. Bucke, Harned, and Traubel (New York, 1902), v, 58–60, 90, 146–147; T. W. Higginson, Atlantic Monthly, xix (1867), 33 ff., xx (1867), 752 ff., xxv (1870), 61 ff.; Eugene Benson, Galaxy, iii (1867), 871 ff.

3 Cf., e.g., Lowell, Literary Essays (Boston, 1890), ii, 150–152, 278; Gilder, Scribner's Monthly, x (1875), 112–114; Nation, vi (1868), 7–8.

4 Cf. Herbert Edwards, “Howells and the Controversy over Realism in American Fiction,” American Literature, iii (1931), 237–248.

5 Cf. H. R. Brown, “The Great American Novel,” American Literature, vii (1935), 1–14, and Nation, vi (1868), 27.

6 “American Poetry,” Old and New, v (1872), 475.

7 Cf. Herbert Edwards, loc. cit.

8 I have utilized in the main only Howells' statements before 1892, although some quotations throwing light on the earlier period have been drawn from works appearing later.

9 Cf. B. T. Spencer, loc. cit., pp. 133–136; and Whitman, Preface (1855), Complete Writings, v, 161–163, 173, 184.

10 Cf. B. T. Spencer, op. cit., pp. 128–130.

11 Criticism and Fiction (Boston, 1891), pp. 137, 138.

12 Ibid., pp. 46–47, 69–70, 80, 104.

13 Harper's, lxxxi (1890), 318.

14 Cf. Harper's, lxxxiii (1891), 962 ff.; Literature and Life (New York, 1902), pp. 204, 205; T. W. Higginson and H. W. Boynton, A Reader's American Literature (Boston, 1903), p. 3.

15 Harper's, lxxxiii (1891), 962–963. Cf. also Current Literature, viii (1891), 10. For a representative English critic on the lack of an American literature see T. Watts, Literary Digest, iii (1891), 234.

16 Cf. B. T. Spencer, op. cit., p. 130.

17 Current Literature, viii (1891), 2. In a later work, Literary Friends and Acquaintances (New York, 1900), p. 116, Howells remarked that in pre-Civil War days New England was a nation in itself and had “something like a national literature,” but “it will probably be centuries yet before the life of the whole country, the American life as distinguished from the New England life, shall have anything so like a national literature.”

18 Criticism and Fiction, p. 144; Current Literature, viii (1891), 2.

19 Current Literature, viii (1891), 2.

20 Harriet Monroe, “Statesman and Novelist,” Lippincott's, xxxix (1887), 130.

21 “American Literary Centres,” Literature and Life (New York, 1902), pp. 176–177. How thoroughly Howells equated American and sectional literatures may be seen in his review of the period written after the turn of the century: “we had really no use for an American literary centre before the Civil War, for it was only after the Civil War that we really began to have an American literature. Up to that time we had a Colonial literature, a Knickerbocker literature, and a New England literature. But as soon as the country began to feel its life in every limb with the coming of peace, it began to speak in varying accents of all the different sections—North, East, South, West, and Farthest West; but not before that time.” (Ibid., p. 175.)

22 Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, ed. Mildred Howells (Garden City, 1928), i, 116. Cf. also Literary Friends and Acquaintances, pp. 70 ff.

23 Harper's, lxxxiii (1891), 964–965. Cf. also Criticism and Fiction, p. 140.

24 My Mark Twain (New York, 1920), p. 139. Cf. also Howells' opinion that Uncle Tom's Cabin was the first truly American novel, earlier fiction lacking “American scope and import.” Heroines of Fiction (New York, 1901), ii, 152.

25 Harper's, lxxxiii (1891), 962, 963.

26 Ibid., p. 963.

27 Criticism and Fiction, pp. 128, 129.

28 Howells pursues this same equation of the highly moral and the American artist in his later conception of Hawthorne and James as American novelists. Hawthorne he finds uniquely American and different from English novelists in his “greater refinement” and subtler beauty“; James through his ”highest refinement“ expressed the expanding national life in fiction as truly national as any yet known.” Heroines of Fiction (New York, 1901), i, 161; ii, 164, 165.

29 R. B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (Boston, 1935), i, 316. Cf. also footnote 28.

30 R. B. Perry, op. cit., I, 319.

31 Cf. Pelham Edgar, Henry James: Man and Author (Boston and New York, 1927), p. 41.

32 Henry James, Letters, ed. Percy Lubbock (New York, 1920), i, 166.

33 Henry James, Hawthorne (New York, 1879), p. 3. Cf. also Letters, i, 72; and E. K. Brown, Dalhousie Review, xiv (1934), 143.

34 Cf. Hawthorne, pp. 42–43.

35 Cf. Morris Roberts, Henry James's Criticism (Cambridge, 1929), pp. 77, 116.

36 The Mystery of Metropolisville (New York, 1873), p. 7.

37 Ibid.

38 Cf. George C. Eggleston, Recollections of a Varied Life (New York, 1910), p. 234.

39 Preface to the Library Edition, 1892, The Hoosier Schoolmaster (New York, 1899), pp. 6–7.

40 New England Magazine ii (N.S., 1890), 243.

41 Son of the Middle Border (New York, 1928), p. 387. Cf. the altered version of this passage in Roadside Meetings (New York, 1930), p. 59. Ambrose Bierce's caustic analysis of Garland's ‘cornfed enthusiasm’ for an American literature apparently was not written till the middle 'nineties. Cf. Bierce, Collected Works (New York, 1911), x, 25 ff.

42 Ibid., and New England Magazine, ii (N.S., 1890), 243.

43 Literary News, ix (1888), 236–237.

44 Roadside Meetings (New York, 1930), p. 32. Garland's collected criticism, Crumbling Idols, containing an elaboration of his views as summarized above, did not appear till 1894.

45 Anna L. Dawes, 'Some Minor Observations on the American Novel,“ Critic, xi (N.S., 1889), 1.

46 Cosmopolitan, xiii (1892), 345.

47 Cf. Public Opinion, xi (1891), 617; Critic, vii (N.S., 1886), 162; Chautauquan, vii (1887), 279.

48 Cf. A. H. Starke, Sidney Lanier (Chapel Hill, 1933), pp. 139–140, 237.

49 “The Western Literary Movement,” Chautauquan, vii (1887), 279. Cf. also Lippincott's, xxiii (1879), 760.

50 This latter claim had been utilized by New England against the South in the earlier part of the century. Cf. B. T. Spencer, “A National Literature 1837–55,” American Literature, viii (1936), 132–133. For the South's later, similar claim see Public Opinion, x (1890), 44.

51 Overland Monthly, iii (2nd S., 1884), 661.

52 Ibid., ii (2nd S., 1883), 658, and v (2nd S., 1885), 552–553. With its literary creed of copying life, the Overland also advocated “pupilage to the best masters of all times and places,” decried the English critics' desire for an American literature of war paint and feathers, and claimed a distinct Americanism in the realism of Howells and James in its “irreproachable morale” and artistic seriousness. Ibid., i (2nd S. 1883), 431. Cf. also H. H. Bancroft, Literary Industries (San Francisco, 1890), pp. 14–19.

53 Poetical Works (Boston, 1882), p. 2. Cf. also Cornhill, vii (N.S., 1889), 8 for his theory of the local color story.

54 Cf. Overland Monthly, i (2nd S., 1883), 69, 80; and Century, xxvi (1883), 362 ff.

55 Cf. Nation, xxii (1876), 291; Harper's, l (1875), 691 ff.; Chautauquan, vii (1886), 23 ff. For E. C. Stedman's disapproval see his Letters, ed. Stedman and Gould (New York, 1910), i, 449. Harte also denied that a distinctly American humor existed. Cf. “American Humor,” Writings (Boston, 1914), xx, 225 ff.

56 Critic, ii, (N.S., 1884), 166–167, 203; iii (N.S., 1885), 71. Atlantic Monthly, xlii (1878), 771; and Century, xxvi (1883), 362 ff.

57 Cf. Public Opinion, x (1890), 44, and xi (1891), 617.

58 M. G. Van Renssalaer, “American Fiction,” Lippincott's, xxiii (1879), 753; New Princeton Review, i (1886), 394.

59 International Review, ix (1880), 149, 150.

60 M. G. Van Renssalaer, loc. cit.

61 The Fortunes of Literature under the American Republic,“ Appletons' Journal xi (N.S., 1881), 43–44. Cf. also Appletons' Journal, vii (N.S., 1879), 86–87.

62 F. N. Zabriskie, “The Novel of Our Times,” New Princeton Review, i (1886), 400, 401.

63 Independent, xliv (1892), 1544–45.

64 Hamlin Garland, Roadside Meetings (New York, 1930), pp. 135–137. Although the local color writers were generally associated with the realistic movement, there was frequent recognition that some of the regional literature, especially that of Harte, was a departure from the “hard, cold exactness of realism.” Cf. Critic, ii (N.S. 1884), 166–167; Independent, xliv (1892), 1544, 1545; and North American, cxxxix (1884), 176.

65 Uncollected Poetry and Prose, ed. E. Holloway (New York, 1932), ii, 54, 57–58.

66 “The American Element in Fiction,” North American Review, cxxxix (1884), 176–177. Bayard Taylor expressed a similar idea in contending that the American short-story was a corollary of American sectionalism, an indication of the fact that American civilization was not homologous. Cf. Lippincotts, xxiii (1879), 754.

67 “Agnosticism in Fiction,” Princeton Review, xiii (N.S., 1884), 14–15.

68 “The American Element in Fiction,” loc. cit., p. 166.

69 Ibid., p. 167.

70 Ibid., pp. 167, 168. Hawthorne thus defends Cooper, James's earlier novels, and his father's The Marble Faun as characteristically American, quoting the famous Preface to the last-named as a pro-American indication that Europe is a suitable quarry. Ibid., pp. 170–171.

71 Cf. Ibid., 167–169, 171–175; and B. T. Spencer, op. cit., pp. 125 ff.

72 Scribner's Monthly, xxii (1881), 541 f.

73 Ibid., pp. 542–543.

74 Ibid., pp. 824–827.

75 Burroughs applied the phrase to Thompson and himself. Life and Letters, ed. Clara Barrus (Boston and New York, 1925), i, 345.

76 Cf. Public Opinion, v (1888), 74.

77 North American Review, cxlix (1889), 118–120.

78 Ibid., and Chautauquan, vii (1887), 279.

79 Current Literature, iii (1889), 278.

80 Public Opinion, v (1888), 74.

81 Ibid., and Current Literature, ii (1889), 5.

82 Cf. Public Opinion, vi (1889), 538; viii (1890), 415; ix (1890), 423.

83 Overland Monthly, v (2nd S., 1885), 553.

84 Public Opinion, vi (1888), 18.

85 Scribner's, x (1891), 394. Cf. also Public Opinion, x (1891), 505, and xi (1891), 390–391.

86 Public Opinion, xii (1892), 634–635.

87 “Modern Fiction,” Complete Writings (Hartford, 1904), xv, 173.

88 Cf. Lippincotts, xxiii (1879), 758–760.

89 G. H. Badger, “Howells as an Interpreter of American Life,” International Review, xiv (1883), 380–383, 385.

90 “The Native Element in American Fiction,” Century, xxvi (1883), 372–375. H. H. Boyesen defends Howells' Americanism at the expense of James's cynical alienation. North American Review, cxlviii (1889), 600–601.

91 D. A. Goodsell, Chautauquan, vii (1886), 23 ff.

92 “On the Threshold,” Independent, xliv (1892), 1547.

93 Ibid.

94 Cf. Complete Works, v, 58–60, 90, 136, 141; vii, 12.

95 “An Old Man's Rejoinder,” Complete Works, vi, 287.

96 Complete Works, vii, 9, 12–13.