The Red Badge of Courage was a sensation when it was first
published in 1894. More vivid, unflinching, and artistically and
philosophically complex than any prior war novel, it made its
author, Stephen Crane, an overnight international celebrity.
Readers were gripped by Crane's lucid descriptions of warfare and
of the vacillating mind of his young, untested soldier, Henry
Fleming, and many assumed that he must have been a veteran of the
Civil War. Some actual veterans went so far as to claim that they
had fought alongside Crane in the war. Astonishing as the novel
itself is the fact that Crane was only twenty-three when he wrote
it and had never even lived through a war, let alone fought in one.
Even today, more than one hundred years after its publication and
after generations of readers and decades of commentary, this most
famous of Crane's works continues to astonish, amaze, and puzzle.
As Eric Carl Link, Professor of American Literature at the
University of Memphis, writes in his introduction to this volume in
the Critical Insights series, Red Badge is much more than a war
novel-it is a drama of the human psyche, a pinnacle of American
naturalism and impressionism, a precursor to modernism, and a
brilliant comment on the relations between human beings and our
universe. As the essays collected here can attest, the novel is
rich in interpretive possibilities. For readers studying Red Badge
for the first time, a quartet of introductory essays provide
valuable background. Matthew J. Bolton examines how the culture of
the 1890's-with its clashes over immigration, industrialization,
poverty, and military policy-influenced Crane and, in another
essay, how Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism can improve our
understanding of the novel. Patrick K. Dooley offers a
comprehensive survey of the veritable ocean of Red Badge criticism,
and Stanley B. Greenfield draws on two of Crane's short stories to
resolve some of the some of the critical issues that have long
plagued scholars of Red Badge. Continuing the discussion are a
variety of classic and contemporary essays on the novel. Author and
poet James M. Cox provides a comprehensive overview of the novel
and praises it as "one of the great war novels of world
literature." Harold R. Hungerford turns to Civil War history to
establish the battle Crane on which modeled the action of his
story. Robert C. Albrecht analyzes Crane's use of narrative point
of view to show how it supports Crane's concept of reality. Thomas
L. Kent takes up Crane's stance of epistemological uncertainty, and
Eric Carl Link likewise examines his subjectivism. Ben Satterfield
argues that, despite some critics' qualms, the novel is a unified,
coherent work of art that projects a humanistic vision, and Donald
Pizer, in the course of an examination of the textual controversies
surrounding the novel, agrees with Satterfield that it is a unified
and coherent work. Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin examines the use of
humor and fallacious reasoning in the novel. James W. Tuttleton and
James Trammell Cox analyze Crane's imagery, and William B.
Dillingham pieces together Crane's concept of courage and heroism.
Robert M. Rechnitz and Harold Kaplan then weigh in on two perennial
questions-whether Henry Fleming matures over the course of the
novel and the meaning of the novel's ending-and Verner D. Mitchell
offers a highly innovative reading of race and gender in the work.
Also included in this volume are a brief biography of Crane's life,
a celebration of Crane's achievement by Paris Review contributor
Barry Harbaugh, a chronology of Crane's life, and a detailed
bibliography for readers wishing to study this classic American
novel in greater depth.
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