Nelson is an American critic and educator. In the following excerpt, she analyzes the structure of Tropic of Cancer using Jungian theories of unconscious, primitive archetypes and Erich Neumann's writings on ancient myths about the "primordial Great Mother."

In the following excerpt, Lewis provides an overview of the major themes of Tropic of Cancer.

Wickes is a Belgian-born American critic and educator. In the following excerpt from his study of American expatriate writers of the 1920s and 30s, he discusses the crucial influence that the avant-garde, bohemian atmosphere of Paris had on Miller's artistic growth, and the personal tribulations and friendships which contributed to the genesis of Tropic of Cancer.

Friedman is an American critic and educator. In the following essay, he remarks on past critical opinion and legal actions concerning Tropic of Cancer, examines contradictions in some of the book's central themes, and concludes that Tropic of Cancer is ultimately a work of negation rather than affirmation.

Williams is an English educator and critic. In the following excerpt, she criticizes Kate Millett's influential attack on Henry Miller's misogyny as theoretically naive and ineffectual. Williams proposes a feminist reading which takes account of the sexual ambivalence implied by Miller's masochism and suggests that Miller embraced a desire for self-annihilation.

In the following excerpt, Gordon discusses the imagery, style, and themes of Tropic of Cancer, arguing that the novel is a documentation of Miller's struggle for self-liberation.

In the following essay, Hutchison discusses the publishing history of Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, in the context of the American legal system's censorship of “obscene” materials against the increasing popularity of publications such as Playboy magazine and changing attitudes about sex. The author argues that the first American publication of Miller's novel in 1961, along with the ensuing trial about its obscenity, was carefully planned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press, who ...

An English novelist and essayist, Orwell is the author of such well-known works as Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) as well as the autobiographical narrative Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). His essays evince a profoundly moral concern for the victims of economic, political, and social exploitation. In the following excerpt from an essay that was originally published in New Directions in Prose and Poetry in 1940, he applauds Miller's use of vernacular and poetic language in Tropic of Cance...

Hassan is an Egyptian-born American critic and educator who has written numerous books on modernist and post-modernist literature, including Radical Innocence: The Contemporary American Novel (1961) and The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature (1971). In the following excerpt, he analyzes the themes and technique of Tropic of Cancer, characterizing the novel as a profane yet lyrical paean to the chaos of raw experience.

Kauffmann is an American dramatist, critic, and educator. In the following essay, which was written shortly after the first legal publication of Tropic of Cancer in the United States, he assesses Miller as a minor figure in American literature—a bawdy and funny provocateur, but one whose incessant use of scatological language and amateur philosophy reveals an immature and unsophisticated cast of mind.

In Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer an Emersonian epigraph announces the romanticized autobiography that would become the staple of Miller's art. "These novels," Emerson asserts, "will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies—captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experiences, and how to record truth truly." Along with Whitman—"In Whitman the whole American scene ...

In the opening pages of Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller announces the extravagant anti-art that will be his theme. Beyond the lice and the cancer of time, beyond hope and convention, Beauty and Art, the auto-hero offers his book as libel and insult, the studied rejection of accepted literary values: "I am going to sing for you," he promises, "a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse." With fractured echoes of Whitm...

A French-born American autobiographer, novelist, short story writer, and educator, Nin established her early artistic reputation through experimental novels exploring the feminine psyche and through her association with Miller, whom she met in Paris in 1932 when he was writing the early drafts of Tropic of Cancer. In the following essay, which was originally published in 1934 as a preface to the first edition of Tropic of Cancer, she praises Miller for addressing the visceral roots of human experience.