QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Why does Oxford University display on its walls The Gettysburg Address of
Lincoln? What books helped mold his style?
What period of our development do Bret Harte's stories illustrate? What are some special characteristics of his short stories? Does he belong to the school of Poe or Hawthorne? Which one of our great short story writers has the most humor,—Irving, Hawthorne, Poe, or Harte? Which one of them do you enjoy the most?
Why is Eugene Field called the poet-laureate of children? Which of his poems indicated for reading do you prefer? What are the most striking qualities of his verse?
Point out the chief characteristics of Riley's verse. What lines please you most for their humor, references to rural life, optimism, kindly spirit, and pathos? Why is he so widely popular?
Which of Mark Twain's works are most valuable to the student of American literature and history? In what sense is he a historian? What phases of western development does he describe? Give instances (a) of his humor which depends on incongruity, (b) of his philosophical humor, (c) of his hatred of hypocrisy, and (d) of his solicitude for the weak. Why is he said to belong to the school of Cervantes? What specially impresses you about Mark Twain's style?
CHAPTER VII
THE EASTERN REALISTS
FROM ROMANTICISM TOWARD REALISM.—The enormous circulation of magazines in the United States has furnished a wide market for the writers of fiction. Magazines have especially stimulated the production of short stories, which show how much technique their authors have learned from Poe. The increased attention paid to fiction has led to a careful study of its guiding principles and to the formation of new rules for the practice of the art.
When we look back at the best work of earlier writers of American fiction, we shall find that it is nearly all romantic. In the eighteenth century, Charles Brockden Brown wrote in conformity to the principles of early romanticism, and combined the elements of strangeness and terror in his tales. The modified romanticism persisting through the greater part of the nineteenth century demanded that the unusual should at least be retained in fiction as a dominating factor. Irving's Rip Van Winkle has the older element of the impossible, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow shows fascinating combinations of the unusual. Cooper achieved his greatest success in presenting the Indians and the stalwart figure of the pioneer against the mysterious forest as a background. Hawthorne occasionally availed himself of the older romantic materials, as in The Snow Image, Rappaccini's Daughter_, and Young Goodman Brown, but he was more often attracted by the newer elements, the strange and the unusual, as in The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables. Poe followed with a combination of all the romantic materials,—the supernatural, the terrible, and the unusual. Bret Harte applied his magnifying glass to unusual crises in the strange lives of the western pioneers. By a skillful use of light and shadow, Mark Twain heightened the effect of the strange scenes through which he passed in his young days. Almost all the southern writers, from Simms to Cable and Harris, loved to throw strong lights on unusual characters and romantic situations.