The Oxford Book of American Essays
By Brander Matthews
Length17h 37m
About this audiobook
Excerpt: "The customary antithesis between "American" literature and "English" literature is unfortunate and misleading in that it seems to exclude American authors from the noble roll of those who have contributed to the literature of our mother-tongue. Of course, when we consider it carefully we cannot fail to see that the literature of a language is one and indivisible and that the nativity or the domicile of those who make it matters nothing. Just as Alexandrian literature is Greek, so American literature is English; and as Theocritus demands inclusion in any account of Greek literature, so Thoreau cannot be omitted from any history of English literature as a whole. The works of Anthony Hamilton and Rousseau, Mme. de Staël and M. Maeterlinck are not more indisputably a part of the literature of the French language than the works of Franklin and Emerson, of Hawthorne and Poe are part of the literature of the English language. Theocritus may never have set foot on the soil of Greece, and Thoreau never adventured himself on the Atlantic to visit the island-home of his ancestors; yet the former expressed himself in Greek and the latter in English,—and how can either be neglected in any comprehensive survey of the literature of his own tongue? None the less is it undeniable that there is in Franklin and Emerson, in Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, whatever their mastery of the idiom they inherited in common with Steele and Carlyle, with Browning and Lamb, an indefinable and intangible flavor which distinguishes the first group from the second. The men who have set down the feelings and the thoughts, the words and the deeds of the inhabitants of the United States have not quite the same outlook on life that we find in the men who have made a similar record in the British Isles. The social atmosphere is not the same on the opposite shores of the Western ocean; and the social organization is different in many particulars. For all that American literature is,—in the apt phrase of Mr. Howells,—"a condition of English literature," nevertheless it is also distinctively American. American writers are as loyal to the finer traditions of English literature as British writers are; they take an equal pride that they are also heirs of Chaucer and Dryden and subjects of King Shakespeare; yet they cannot help having the note of their own nationality."
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.8 (116)
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GenreGeneral Fiction
Length17 hrs 37 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateApr 6, 2022
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1INTRODUCTION
2THE EPHEMERA: AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
3THE WHISTLE TO MADAME BRILLON BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
4DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANKLIN AND THE GOUT
5CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD BACHELOR FRANCIS HOPKINSON
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6JOHN BULL WASHINGTON IRVING
7THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY WASHINGTON IRVING
8KEAN’S ACTING RICHARD HENRY DANA
9GIFTS RALPH WALDO EMERSON
10USES OF GREAT MEN RALPH WALDO EMERSON
11BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
12THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION EDGAR ALLAN POE
13BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
14WALKING HENRY DAVID THOREAU
15ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS[5] JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
16PREFACE TO "LEAVES OF GRASS" 1855 WALT WHITMAN
17AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
18THACKERAY IN AMERICA GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
19OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON THEODORE WINTHROP THROUGH THE CITY
20CALVIN A STUDY OF CHARACTER CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER
21FIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
22I TALK OF DREAMS W. D. Howells
23AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE JOHN BURROUGHS
24CUT-OFF COPPLES’S CLARENCE KING
25THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS HENRY JAMES
26THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
27COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES[9] HENRY CABOT LODGE
28NEW YORK AFTER PARIS W. C. Brownell
29THE TYRANNY OF THINGS EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN
30FREE TRADE VS. PROTECTION IN LITERATURE SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS
31DANTE AND THE BOWERY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
32THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
33ON TRANSLATING THE ODES OF HORACE W. P. TRENT
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