American literature | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 12 pages of analysis & critique of American literature.

American literature | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 12 pages of analysis & critique of American literature.
This section contains 3,074 words
(approx. 11 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Leslie A. Fiedler

SOURCE: “The Power of Blackness: Faustian Man and the Cult of Violence,” in Love and Death in the American Novel, Revised Edition, Dell Publishing, 1966, pp. 430-505.

In the following excerpt, Fiedler discusses the idea of despair in Melville's works, asserting that Melville's style changed from gothic to sentimental as his career progressed.

Melville was truer, finally, to the vision of blackness, which he pretended to have discovered in Hawthorne, than was Hawthorne himself. The reality of damnation he never denied; but the meaning of it, for one committed to a skeptical and secular view, he questioned. Especially in his later works, he presented the “mystery of iniquity” in such complexly ironical contexts that the wariest of readers is occasionally baffled. Nevertheless, he kept faith throughout his fiction not only with the gothic vision in general, but with the Faustian theme; creating, along two main lines of descent, a...

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This section contains 3,074 words
(approx. 11 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Leslie A. Fiedler
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Critical Essay by Leslie A. Fiedler from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.