Contents[1] [Volume Three]
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Parrington, Vernon Louis
Part III
Reaction
I. [The War and Liberalism: The reaction developed a many-sided attack on the liberalisms of the preceding period. The older intellectuals had abandoned French equalitarian democracy, but set as their goal economic democracy; the younger intellectuals attacked the principle of democracy, the ideal of industrialism, the culture of the middle class]
II. [The Attack on Democracy: A return to the eighteenth century spirit of aristocracy. Purveyors of current disgusts]
I. [Philosophical: H. L. Mencken—a Nietzschean critic. A cynic who grows witty over American failure]
II. [Biological: The falsity of the perfectionist philosophy derived from Locke. Not environment but heredity—the isolated germ existence before birth]
III. [Psychological: The discovery of morons. Primitive drives—sex, hunger—keep men children. Nevertheless behaviorism a denial of the aristocracy of the biological argument, holding with Locke that environment is determining]
III. [The Attack on Industrialism: A comprehensive movement that enlists first-class minds—intellectuals, poets, novelists, dramatists]
IV. [The Attack on the Middle Class: Sinclair Lewis;[10] Zona Gale;[11] Evelyn Scott]
V. [New Philosophies]
I. [Economics: Denial of the finality of economic law: A pragmatic view—Mitchell]
II. [Political Theory: A decline of the program of industrial democracy]
III. [Science: A rejection of the law of causality and a weakening of the authority of science]
VI. [New Literary Fashions]
I. [In fiction, impressionism and expressionism—Sherwood Anderson[11]]
II. [In biography: The impressionism of psychography]
III. [In war fiction:[11] A brutal realism and frank pacifism]
Addenda
323
Naturalism in American Fiction
323
1. Stephen Crane
328
2. Frank Norris
329
“McTeague”
330
“Vandover and the Brute”
332
“The Octopus”
332
Sidney Lanier
334
The Incomparable Mr. Cabell
335
The Problem Novel and the Diversion from Naturalism
346
Jack London: The Novelist of the Proletariat
352
Upton Sinclair