Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
III. [The second solution--craft unionism: Gompers and the
A. F. of L. A middle-class solution]
II. [The Rise of the Left]
I. [The Menace of Socialism: The Haymarket riot; Governor
Altgeld]
II. [Leaders of the Left: Daniel De Leon; Eugene Debs; Victor
Berger]
III. The Quest of Utopia 301
I. Edward Bellamy and _Looking Backward_ 302
II. [After Bellamy: “Nationalism”; Tourgée’s _Murvale Eastman_]
IV. [The Darkening Skies of Letters: The clouds gathering
on the “gay” horizon of American optimism. Changes in
the temper of scientific thought point to determinism.
A gloomier realism on the way, coming first from the
West] 316
I. [Edwin Markham and “The Man with a Hoe”]
II. [The Rise of Naturalism: Stephen Crane; Frank Norris[494]]
III. [Fiction Discovers the City]
Part III
The Hesitant South
I. [Two Worlds: The aristocratic clinging to the romance of
the past; the plebeian agrarian joining with the Middle
Border in its protest against plutocracy. Tom A. Watson.
The beginnings of industrialism that proposed to exploit
the cotton and iron of the South]
II. [The Romance of the Past: Thomas Nelson Page and the
plantation tradition; Joel Chandler Harris and the romance
of the negro; Mary Murfree and the romance of
the mountaineer; George Washington Cable and the
romance of the creole]
III. [Sidney Lanier--the poet of the South[495]]
IV. [Henry W. Grady and the Surrender to the Middle
Class]
V. [The Southern Intellectual: James Branch Cabell;[496]
Ellen Glasgow; W. W. Woodward]
Book Three: The New America
Part I
The Rise of Liberalism[497]
1. [Movements of Liberalism: Three periods: 1790-1912;
1820-1860; 1903-1917. Since 1870 three attitudes towards
democracy: (1) It has been achieved but the machine
needs closer attention--civil service reform; (2) It has
not been achieved because of the Constitution, but it must
be achieved through remodeling political machinery; (3)
No intelligent person desires it to be achieved. The movement
of liberalism (1903-1917) a great stock-taking
venture]
I. [Discoveries]
1. [That the democratic program has not been fulfilled]
2. [That the Constitution is not a democratic instrument,
and was not intended to be--the clash between
the Declaration and the Constitution]
3. [That while professing to create a democracy we have
been erecting a plutocracy]
II. [Conclusions]
1. [The rediscovery of the relations between economics
and politics]
2. [The necessity of subjecting property to the collective
will]
3. [To that end the need of democratizing the machinery
of government--political Progressivism. The application
of the Hamiltonian state to the Jeffersonian
program]
II. [Liberalism and the Journalists: The Muckraking Movement[498]]
I. [The Origins in the Nineties--Henry D. Lloyd’s _Wealth
vs. Commonwealth_]
II. [The Gathering Clan: Lawson’s _Frenzied Finance_; Ida
Tarbell; Ray Stannard Baker; _McClure’s_, _The American_,
_Hampton’s_]
III. [The Left Wing]
1. [Lincoln Steffens, _The Shame of the Cities_]
2. [Charles Edward Russell, _The Stories of Great Railroads_]
3. [Gustavus Myers, _Great American Fortunes_]
4. [A. M. Simons, _Social Forces in American History_]
III. [Liberalism and Politics: The Movement of Progressivism]
I. [Robert La Follette--The State and Industry]
II. [Theodore Roosevelt--Middle-Class Liberal]
III. [Woodrow Wilson]
Part II
Liberalism and Letters
I. [Liberalism and the Intellectuals: The movement becomes
critical]
I. [Walter E. Weyl--Radical]
II. [Thorstein Veblen--Social Economist]
III. [Charles A. Beard--Political Scientist[498]]
IV. [Herbert Croly--Political Critic]
V. [The Younger Intellectuals: Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck
Brooks, Waldo Frank]
II. [Liberalism and Fiction: A shift from liberalism to
radicalism--from politics to economics]
I. [Winston Churchill: From romance to syndicalism[499]]
II. [Robert Herrick: Academic radical[499]]
III. [Jack London: Revolutionist[500]]
IV. [Upton Sinclair: Social detective[500]]
III. [Liberalism and Realism]
I. [The Poets and Realism: Masters, Sandburg, Frost, Robinson]
II. [The Essay--Huneker]
III. [Theodore Dreiser--A Modern[501]]
Part III
Reaction
I. [The War and Liberalism: The reaction developed a many-sided
attack on the liberalisms of the preceding period.
The older intellectuals had abandoned French equalitarian
democracy, but set as their goal economic democracy;
the younger intellectuals attacked the principle of democracy,
the ideal of industrialism, the culture of the
middle class]
II. [The Attack on Democracy: A return to the eighteenth
century spirit of aristocracy. Purveyors of current disgusts]
I. [Philosophical: H. L. Mencken--a Nietzschean critic. A
cynic who grows witty over American failure]
II. [Biological: The falsity of the perfectionist philosophy derived
from Locke. Not environment but heredity--the
isolated germ existence before birth]
III. [Psychological: The discovery of morons. Primitive drives--sex,
hunger--keep men children. Nevertheless behaviorism
a denial of the aristocracy of the biological argument,
holding with Locke that environment is determining]
III. [The Attack on Industrialism: A comprehensive movement
that enlists first-class minds--intellectuals, poets,
novelists, dramatists]
IV. [The Attack on the Middle Class: Sinclair Lewis;[502] Zona
Gale;[503] Evelyn Scott]
V. [New Philosophies]
I. [Economics: Denial of the finality of economic law: A pragmatic
view--Mitchell]
II. [Political Theory: A decline of the program of industrial
democracy]
III. [Science: A rejection of the law of causality and a weakening
of the authority of science]
VI. [New Literary Fashions]
I. [In fiction, impressionism and expressionism--Sherwood
Anderson[503]]
II. [In biography: The impressionism of psychography]
III. [In war fiction:[503] A brutal realism and frank pacifism]
Addenda 323
Naturalism in American Fiction 323
1. Stephen Crane 328
2. Frank Norris 329
“McTeague” 330
“Vandover and the Brute” 332
“The Octopus” 332
Sidney Lanier 334
The Incomparable Mr. Cabell 335
The Problem Novel and the Diversion from Naturalism 346
Jack London: The Novelist of the Proletariat 352
Upton Sinclair 353
Theodore Dreiser: Chief of American Naturalists 354
Sinclair Lewis: Our Own Diogenes 360
Sherwood Anderson: A Psychological Naturalist 372
A New Romance 372
1917-1924 373
I. The Small Town in Fiction 373
William Allen White: A Son of the Middle Border 374
Booth Tarkington: The Dean of American Middle-Class Letters 375
Dorothy Canfield (Fisher) 375
II. The Realistic Small Town and the New Naturalism 376
Zona Gale--The Transition from Romance to Realism 377
Donn Byrne 377
Robert Nathan 378
Joseph Hergesheimer: A Sophisticated Romantic 379
III. Certain Other Writers 381
Edith Wharton--The Genteel Tradition and the New Plutocracy 381
Willa Cather: Epics of Women 382
IV. Some War Books 384
John Dos Passos 384
E. E. Cummings 385
Thomas Boyd 385
Laurence Stallings 385
V. Youth in Revolt--Certain Purveyors of the Hectic 385
F. Scott Fitzgerald 386
Stephen Vincent Benét and Floyd Dell 386
Ben Hecht 386
Ole Rölvaag’s _Giants in the Earth_ 387
The Short Story 397
A Chapter in American Liberalism 401
Bibliography 415
Index 421
Footnotes
[493] This is given in full, as Professor Parrington left it, with
those parts not completed by him in brackets. Some revision has been
made for the parts he completed, but notes have been added to the text
to show his original intention. For some of the bracketed headings
after Part II of Book II some material is given in the Addenda from
other work of Parrington’s.--_Publisher._
[494] See “Naturalism in American Fiction,” in the Addenda--lecture
notes including Crane and Norris.
[495] See Addenda for lecture notes on Lanier.
[496] See Addenda for magazine article on Cabell.
[497] See “A Chapter in American Liberalism,” the last of the Addenda.
[498] See _Ibid._
[499] See Addenda, “The Problem Novel and the Diversion from
Naturalism.”
[500] See Addenda for brief notes.
[501] See Addenda for notes of lecture on Dreiser.
[502] See Addenda for reprint of pamphlet on Lewis.
[503] See Addenda for brief notes.
Book One • Changing America
When America laid aside its arms after Appomattox and turned back
to the pursuits of peace it was well advanced toward the goal set
by Alexander Hamilton three-quarters of a century before. The great
obstacle that had withheld its feet hitherto had been swept from its
path. A slave economy could never again thwart the ambitions of the
capitalistic economy. The jealous particularism that for a generation
had obstructed the inevitable drift toward a coalescing national unity
had gone down in defeat. The agrarian South was no longer master in
the councils of government; the shaping of the future had fallen to
other hands and the unfolding of the new order could go forward without
southern let or hindrance.
Other obstacles were falling away of themselves. North as well as