Studies in Classic American Literature"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted." ― D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) by D. H. Lawrence is considered culturally important to Western culture in its literary criticism of multiple American authors: Benjamin Franklin, Poe, Melville, Whitman, and Fenimore Cooper, among others. Even though the prose is informal, the ideas are lofty. Lawrence's writing highlights the American consciousness found in eighteenth and nineteenth century literature and is a must-read for lovers of history and the timeless authors of classic American literature. |
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ache Ahab artist beautiful belief Benjamin bird Blithedale Romance blood body Cape Horn captain Chingachgook consciousness Cooper Crèvecœur Dana dark death deep Deerslayer democracy destroy devil Dimmesdale disintegrating Dodge Doom earth ecstasy Effingham escaped Europe European evil eyes Father feel Fenimore fight flogged ghastly gods hate Hester Holy Ghost human ideal idealist Indian inside Ishmael kill knew Lake Champlain Leatherstocking Ligeia living look lust master Melville merging Moby Dick moral mortem effects mother mystery mystic myth naked Nathaniel Natty Bumppo natural ness never old skin Omoo open road passion Pearl Pequod perfect pure Queequeg savages Scarlet Letter seems sensual Septimus ship sort soul South Sea spirit strange superior syphilis thing tion true turn vast Venus de Milo vibrations Walt wanted white American white whale Whitman wild woman women worship writhe
Popular passages
Page 106 - And the seraphs sob at vermin fangs In human gore imbued. Out - out are the lights - out all! And over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm, And the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, 'Man,' And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
Page 252 - Lisp'd to me the low and delicious word death, And again death, death, death, death, Hissing melodious, neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart, But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet, Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving me softly all over, Death, death, death, death, death.
Page 115 - Not hear it?— yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long— long— long— many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it— yet I dared not— oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!— I dared not— I dared not speak! We have put her living In the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin I heard them— many, many days ago— yet I dared not—/ dared not speak!
Page 106 - Divine Father! — shall these things be undeviatingly so? — shall this Conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who — who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.
Page 236 - A gentle joyousness — a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified...
Page 17 - INDUSTRY Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Page 237 - Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
Page 92 - But you have there the myth of the essential white America. All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted...
Page 97 - And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.
Page 115 - There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold ; then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.