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The American Tradition in Literature

Sculley Bradley (editor)

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Nov 13, 2014 Werner rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: about-literature

This has long been used as a standard American Literature I and II textbook in many U.S. colleges, and the two-volume 1967 edition was the text used when I took those courses in 1971-1972. For a long time, I didn't list it here on my shelves, and didn't consider reviewing it. That's partly because it wasn't as formative an intellectual influence on me as my high-school British literature textbook, Adventures in English Literature, or remembered as sharply (although, interestingly, I can't even r This has long been used as a standard American Literature I and II textbook in many U.S. colleges, and the two-volume 1967 edition was the text used when I took those courses in 1971-1972. For a long time, I didn't list it here on my shelves, and didn't consider reviewing it. That's partly because it wasn't as formative an intellectual influence on me as my high-school British literature textbook, Adventures in English Literature, or remembered as sharply (although, interestingly, I can't even remember the title of my high-school American literature textbook, though I recall some selections, and a supplemental text), and partly because it's been hard to track down the exact edition in the Goodreads database, and even harder to get my hands on a physical copy to refer to for this review. (After graduating, I kept my copy, but in the many moves since then, it was a victim of downsizing.) However, I finally reflected that Goodreads combines every edition of a book into one database entry, anyway, so finding the exact edition there isn't so crucial; and I decided that together, the first volume of the 1967 edition and the 1974 one-volume edition, both of which the BC library where I work has, should supplement my memory well enough.

All three of the joint authors here were American academics, specializing in the study of American literature; it's not clear how they divided up the responsibilities for different parts of the text. (Interestingly, although Norton is of course a secular publisher, and the text was designed to be nonsectarian and appropriate for public colleges/universities, in 1967 that wasn't felt to require the purging of Christian participation in its preparation; co-author Long was chair of the English Dept. at Baylor Univ., a Southern Baptist school. If the text was being drafted today, 50 years later, it's not likely that he'd have been allowed to participate.) In the discussion below, I'll draw some comparisons between this and the only other American literature textbook I'm very familiar with, American Literature For Christian Schools by Raymond St. John (although the latter is designed mainly for high-school students, and as a one-volume edition is necessarily less broad in its selections).

Both texts divide the national literature into essentially the same four historical periods, which is pretty much the standard schema in the field: colonial/Revolutionary; the Romantic period (up through the Civil War); the Realist period from 1865 through the "long" 19th century; and the years since 1918. (St. John treated Walt Whitman with the pre-Civil War era, this book with the following period; his life actually straddled both.) As is normal for textbooks, the great bulk of both works are treatments of individual writers and selections from their works. (Most of these are followed by discussion questions in St. John's book, but this one lacks that feature.) The authors' introductory discussions for the four periods and for individual writers are about as long in both books, but those here tend to be blander and less controversial (for good or ill), and more inclined to view the historical narrative in triumphalist terms rather than as a decline from a Golden Age. (Personally, I don't think either schema corresponds very strictly to reality.) As best I recall, we didn't cover the period introductions much in class, nor all of the writers and selections; and my reading of the whole book was undoubtedly somewhat spotty, depending on what parts were assigned. (I read more than what was assigned but, because of the time element, not the entire book.)

For the colonial/Revolutionary period, St. John actually treats 17 writers/writings, compared to only 15 here. The writers and selections included have considerable overlap, but although Phillis Wheatley is treated in St. John's book, she's ignored entirely here --inexcusably, IMO. However, this is where I recall getting my first introduction to the poetry of Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor, which I really liked a lot. Both books make heavy use, especially in this period, of writings that are utilitarian rather than literary in the real sense, such as sermons, diaries, historical and descriptive accounts, political tracts and speeches (for instance, Thomas Jefferson, dragged in here but not in the other book, belongs to the study of American history, not American literature), and of excerpting snippets from longer works, which are both pedagogical practices that I deplore.

Coverage of Romantic period writers here isn't really any more extensive overall than in St. John's book: 14 writers are treated here (compared to 13 there), but Abraham Lincoln was not a writer of belle lettres, however worthwhile his writings and speeches are to read in pursuit of other studies. Our authors here, however, do include the South Carolina poet Henry Timrod (although, alas, I don't recall actually reading any of his work.) Otherwise, the same writers, and many of the same selections, are included. I'd already been introduced to Hawthorne, Poe, and some of the poets as a kid, so their work wasn't new to me. But the entire text of Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor (which I've reviewed separately) is included here, and this is where I read it. And I was also introduced here to Washington Irving's "Adventure of the German Student," and to the poetry of Emerson ("Concord Hymn" stayed with me across the years) and Whittier.

Since I only have the 1974 one-volume abridgment to supplement my memory of the second volume, I can't make exact numerical comparisons with St. John's book for it. (I'm guessing that most of the authors in the later edition were in the earlier one, even if I don't specifically recall them, since the former is shorter and would be more apt to have undergone deletions than additions; but the former adds some material that isn't in the latter, so this isn't an ironclad rule.) Where there are additions in the former, they're probably mostly of women and minority writers; and I don't recall that the coverage of these was markedly any better in the 1967 edition than St. John's. (He includes James Weldon Johnson, who isn't in the one-volume edition here.). For works written after 1922 and so under copyright when St. John produced his textbook, Norton had a lot more resources to pay copyright holder's fees than Bob Jones Univ. Press did, and this is reflected here. On the other hand, obviously nothing written after 1967 appeared in that edition of this work; but then, only one of St. John's selections was written after that date.

The selection I remember the most strongly from the second volume of the book is Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," but it's a negative memory, since I really disliked the story. On the other hand, it's probably a very effective introduction to that author's style and outlook. We could say the same for Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle," which I didn't care much for either. T. S. Eliot is treated here (but not by St. John) as an American rather than a British writer, but I'd been introduced to him in high school in British literature class, and so think of him in that way. I remember liking poetry here by Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson. Some writers are represented by the same selections in both books (for instance, William Dean Howells by "Editha," Stephen Crane by "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky," and John Crowe Ransome by "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter.")

Overall, I'd recommend this as a good, broad introduction to American letters for a reader who wants, as it were, an overview of the territory. (Readers might, as I did, skip some parts.) There's likely to be reading here that everyone will like, though not all will necessarily like the same things. And if you're looking for a home schooling text (there's not, IMO, much difference between what high school juniors and college sophomores can handle, if the former have been well-taught and take their education seriously) or even a college or high school text for a public or private schooling context, it could still serve adequately with some supplementation, especially for the post-1967 years. ...more

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