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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 810.9
EAN num: 9780140183771
ISBN number: 0140183779
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 192
Printing Date: December 01, 1990
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 238558
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Lawrence 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.
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Rated by buyers 
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delightful. the essay on moby dick alone is worth the read. has stayed fresh in my memories for over 20 years. lawrence may have been sobering out in taos, but his genuis was burning bright. remember, the works he was praising were not yet completely "canonical." lawrence was a key signpost. vivid and sensitive, imagistic appreciations.
Rated by buyers 
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There are three reasons to read STUDIES IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE by D.H. Lawrence. First: to better understand Lawrence and his themes. Second: to be entertained. Criticism is rarely rendered with so much passion, wit and clarity. Third: to experience American culture from an outsider's perspective, a very knowledgeable though albeit highly opinionated perspective (which makes for that entertainment value).
DHL's prevailing theory is that to emerge as a distinct cultural, as well as distinct political entity free from Europe, America had to go through some growing pains before arriving at its authentic self. America had to kill off the European in its heart. He starts out with Ben Franklin, whom he gives a real trouncing for the overly self-conscious act of assigning an American character with a shopping list of virtues. (It should come as no surprise that DHL especially has trouble with "chastity.") Ben may be generating a fake, a lie, but he marks the beginning of an effort to break with the old homeland, Europe. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur is subsequent in line for a beating. He moved his unfortunate family to the frontier, wrote the letters glowing with the accounts of the American Dream amongst the nature and the "savages" and then went back to France to revel in literary salons. When he returned, the wife and farm had met brutal ends in that American dream in which he had left them, so he settled in New York City. DHL screams, "Fake!" But Crevecoeur did announce the concept of an ideal tied to the unique attributes of the new world.
DHL takes us through Cooper, Poe and Hawthorne, who begin to make progress (and also give DHL space to expound in ways that have annoyed his feminist critics), and onto Dana (TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST) and Melville, who go to sea to find themselves and their American consciousness. It is Melville who smashes the old mold forever and makes way for Whitman to plow through with a new road, singing that song of self.
We get the tour of the past; we get, obliquely, a tour of post World War I intellectual preoccupations; and we get DHL being DHL at full throttle.
Rated by buyers -
This passionate brief survey of American Literature contains much spontaneous flowing masterful and original writing. Lawrence famous 'Trust the teller not the tale' is the motto of the work. It argues that the true creative work takes on a life of its own that even its creator cannot completely define and control.
Perhaps the most famous essay in this book is Lawrence's hatchet- job of Ben Franklin who he found to be a spiteful, penny- pinching, calculating dead soul. In fact old Ben could be in certain places as lively and probably more lively than Lawrence himself.
What however is most important is that Lawrence in this work understands the great subterranean and mysterious genius of a kindred spirit for him, the literary creator of the Great White Whale.
Rated by buyers -
This is a small book yet Lawrence's genius enables him to see big things in it, especially about those large writers like Melville he felt an affinity to. "Trust the tale and not the teller" is one of his motto's here and he tries to show how the great works go beyond the intentions of their creators.
One objection. He is especially hard on Franklin who he makes into a priggish, petty prune of a minor moralist. Franklin was a many - sided genius who was open to kind of creation Lawrence had no sense of.
Rated by buyers -
Useful book to understand America.
Terrific.
And there's more to come....
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