Imatges de pàgina
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of which have a strongly Catholic coloring, are "My New Curate" and "Luke Delmege." Lord Dunsany has produced a series of wonder tales, including "The Gods of Pegana," "Time and the Gods," and "A Dreamer's Tales," inventing his own strange mythology for the purpose-weird, vast, impressive. Some of his work is cast in dramatic form; such, for example, as "The Gods of the Mountain" and "The Laughter of the Gods." The delightful fantasies of James Stephens-for instance, "The Crock of Gold" and "The DemiGods"-play with characteristic Celtic nimbleness on the border line between heaven and earth. His whimsical little poems, sometimes only half a dozen lines in length, are a charming revelation of the buoyancy, the light-heartedness, the assertive and unabashed good fellowship, of a fundamentally Irish nature.

Within the past few years there has been in Ireland a rather significant return from romance to realism, especially in fiction. The common round of life, unrelieved by poetic glamor or the excitement of rare adventure, the harsh and often unlovely environment of the poor in village and city, the pathos of hope deferred and effort without avail, are attracting a number of capable writers. Conspicuous among the recent writers of fiction who have entered this field are James Joyce, Daniel Corkery, Darrell Figgis, and Forrest Reid, much of whose work is of real value and distinction.

Reference List

JOYCE. A Social History of Ireland (2 vols.). Longmans, Green & Co. GREEN. The Old Irish World. The Macmillan Company.

BARKER. Ireland in the Last Fifty Years, 1866-1918. Oxford University Press.

HYDE. A Literary History of Ireland. Charles Scribner's Sons.

HYDE. The Story of Early Gaelic Literature. P. J. Kenedy, New York.
HULL. A Textbook of Irish Literature. Benziger Bros.

MACHAN. The Literature of the Celts (2 vols). Blackie and Son, London.
BOYD. Ireland's Literary Renaissance. Maunsel & Co., London.
BOYD. The Contemporary Drama of Ireland. Little, Brown and Company.
BOURGEOIS. J. M. Synge and the Irish Theater. The Macmillan Company.
YEATS. Irish Fairy and Folk Tales (Modern Library). Boni & Liveright.
FERGUSON. Lays of the Western Gael. Sealy, Bryers, & Walker, Dublin.
SIGERSON. Bards of the Gael and Gall. T. Fisher Unwin, London.

KUNO MEYER. Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry. Constable & Company, London.

HULL. Poem Book of the Gael. Chatto and Windus, London.

HULL. The Cuchulain Saga in Irish Literature. David Nutt, London. ROLLESTON. Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race. Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

ROLLESTON. The High Deeds of Finn. George C. Harrap & Company, London.

LEAHY. Ancient Heroic Romances of Ireland (2 vols.). David Nutt,
London.

LADY GREGORY. Gods and Fighting Men. John Murray, London.
LADY GREGORY. Poets and Dreamers. John Murray, London.

Irish Texts Society (22 vols.) contains Irish texts and translations. David
Nutt, London.

Irish Literature (10 vols.). John D. Morris and Company, Philadelphia. READ. Cabinet of Irish Literature (4 vols.). Gresham Publishing Company, London.

Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry. Geddes, Edinburgh.

BROOKE and ROLLESTON. A Treasury of Irish Poetry. The Macmillan
Company.

YEATS. A Treasury of Irish Poetry. Methuen and Company, London.
PADRAIC GREGORY. Modern Anglo-Irish Verse. David Nutt, London.

COOKE. Dublin Book of Irish Verse. Oxford University Press.
COLUM. Modern Book of Irish Verse. Boni & Liveright.

Suggested Topics

Legendary Ireland.

The Irish missionaries to England and the Continent.

The Irish language.

Irish fairy lore.

Cuchulain and Odysseus as epic heroes.

English rule in Ireland.

Early nineteenth-century fiction in Ireland.

Impulse and motive of the Celtic revival.

William B. Yeats-his life and works.

The Irish theater.

The plays of John M. Synge.

Lady Gregory and her work.

Recent Irish fiction.

Lord Dunsany.

Contemporary Irish poetry.

CHAPTER XV

AMERICAN LITERATURE

THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

The United States is a very young nation. The brief period of its independent existence-less than a hundred and fifty years— makes it a mere infant as compared with almost all the other nations whose literature has been reviewed in this book. Those nations have certain more or less clearly defined national traits, which color their literature and give it something of an individual tone. Perhaps it is too much to expect any such thing as a distinctive national quality to be developed in so short a period of national existence. A national spirit is the gradual result of ages upon ages of history and settled habitation. In the first place, we were a transplanted people; in the second place, we have become an amazingly composite people as viewed from the standpoints of nationality and race; and in the third place, we have undergone rapid and profound changes, geographically, industrially, and socially. All these things naturally interfere with the formation of a national spirit. Many attempts have been made to define the American spirit, or idea. It has been declared to reside in our political principles, in our buoyant hopefulness, in our devotion to liberty, in our rough-and-ready coping with frontier conditions, in our restless energy and enterprise. But these qualities are not peculiar to the American people, though some of them may be present in us in a more intense degree than in other peoples. As a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult, in spite of our boasted independence, for the most careful student to find in our literature any really distinctive quality that sets it off, let us say, from English literature, as in the case of the best writings of Ireland. Of course, with respect to subject matter our literature is American in a very

definite sense. But can we say that we have yet achieved a distinguishing form or spirit? Has the great American play or novel yet been written? We must be content in this chapter merely to record the most striking manifestations of our literature as it stands. A few more generations may perhaps see evolved in the United States a typically American literature.

THE BEGINNINGS

The Colonial period. The earliest settlers in this country had little time to devote to letters, and no idea of themselves as other than loyal Englishmen devoted to their king and to the land from which they had come. They followed the literary fashions prevailing in England. Down to the middle of the eighteenth century there is little to record. In the South virtually the only piece of writing worthy of mention is Colonel William Byrd's "History of the Dividing Line" (between Virginia and North Carolina). It is an interesting and well-written account of the wilderness and of the social life of his times among all classes. In the Middle States the name of Thomas Godfrey stands out as a versifier of some note. His "Prince of Parthia" is a creditable poetic tragedy modeled closely on the Elizabethan and Restoration plays of England.

The New England writers were more prolific. Their work was very largely religious and controversial in tone, even when not so in subject matter. The journal of Bradford and Winslow and the later "History of Plymouth Plantation" by Bradford lay no claim to literary style, but present a vivid account of the trials and triumphs of the early days of Plymouth Colony, colored throughout by a profound conviction of God's guiding providence. The godly Roger Williams preached absolute religious tolerance, in tracts which make very dreary reading, but which show a spirit much in advance of his times. And the ungodly Thomas Morton, by his hilarious colony of revelers at Merrymount, scandalized the Puritans of Boston. He satirized them also in his "New English Canaan," a volume of mingled fair and unfair criticism, which exerted a corrective influence.

The most popular piece of verse-writing of these early days was Wigglesworth's "Day of Doom." It presented in jingling rime a vivid account of the judgment of God upon all lost souls, including unregenerate infants, who, however, are allotted the "easiest room in hell." The verse of Anne Bradstreet is of a distinctly higher order. Among her "Contemplations" are certain short pieces which show a sincere feeling for nature and some real poetic power in expressing it.

Among the many notable preachers whose sermons and related writings constituted the bulk of the literary product of the times, we may single out the two greatest, Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. Mather's most important work was his "Magnalia Christi," a Church history of New England. In a learned and laborious style he recounts a great mass of events, many of them based on evident hearsay or mere superstition, and traces in them all the marvelous providence of God. Edwards was a preacher of singular purity and sweetness of nature combined with the most unyielding religious dogma. We must not forget that his sermon on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is to be set over against many another on the love and grace of God, presented in most appealing language.

The diary of Samuel Sewall, covering the period from 1674 to 1729, is a refreshing account of the daily comings and goings of a person of importance, a fine piece of frank self-revelation and of comment on the times. Madame Knight's account of her journey from Boston to New York in 1704 is a delightful narrative of thoroughly human, good-humored reaction to the varied experiences she encountered.

The Revolutionary period. From 1750 on, colonial history is filled with the stirrings of a discontent against the rule of the mother country, a discontent which gradually increased in bitterness and culminated in the separation of the colonies from England. Religious and didactic works continued to be written, but the outstanding form taken by the literature of the period was that of the political pamphlet, state paper, and oration. We are all familiar with the fact of Jefferson's authorship of the Declara

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