French Criticism of American Literature Before 1850
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Philarete Chasles The year that saw the publication of the first part of Tocqueville's "Democratic en Amerique" produced another work, shorter and of another order of merit, but more closely related than Tocqueville's considerations upon the political aspects of democracy to the subject in hand ? to literature. The work referred to is Philarete Chasles' article in the "Revue des deux Mondes."1 "De la Ldttera- ture dans 1'Amerique du Xord," an essay that was to be followed very frequently by others upon the same subject during practically the whole life of the author. His last work, " De la Psychology sociale des nouveaux peuples," was published in 1875, two years after his death. It would be unfair to both, and it is unnecessary, to compare Chasles with Tocqueville. And xndeed it is of only incidental conc
...ern determine their relative permanent th; what is more immediately important to lejuru their influence in directing contem- Wy thought upon American literature. And 4 sfcW, wt 3; 1853, pp. it may be said at once that the question is one of the most complicated, and, on account of lack of documents, not possible to determine fully. Such questions are never very tangible, but in this case what appears a surprising lack of criticism upon Tocqueville, and the fact that Chasles' work generally appeared in reviews, is a circumstance that leaves the matter insoluble except in connection with a general outline of what afterward developed in this particular field of criticism. In this study Tocqueville was considered before Chasles; but as a matter of fact, so far as special consideration of literature is concerned, Chasles preceded Tocqueville, since the study in the "Revue des deux Mondes" is of 1835, and the second part of the " Démocratie en Amérique"?that containing th...
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