`to the European, the American is first and foremost a
dollar-fiend. We tend to forget the emotional heritage of Hector St
John de Crevecoeur' When D.H. Lawrence made this statement in his
Studies in Classic American Literature, he was thinking of the
Letters from an American Farmer. First published in England in
1782, the Letters came at a timely moment as attention was focused
on America in the closing year of the Revolutionary War of
Independence. Crevecoeur's famous question `What, then, is the
American, this new man?' was a matter of great interest, as it
became evident that America, that new nation, was taking shape
before the eyes of the world. Some of American literature's most
pressing and recurrent concerns are adumbrated in the substance and
style of the Letters: in addition to the question of American
identity, they celebrate the largeness and fertility of the land,
personal determination, and freedom from institutional oppression.
Darker and more symbolic elements complicate the initially sunny
picture, however: the issue of slavery is raised in a particularly
disturbing episode, and the final Letter, `Distresses of a Frontier
Man,' dramatizes the disintegration of the rational enlightened
society of agrarian America into a nightmare of confusion,
incomprehension and premonitions of unspeakable evil. Written by an
emigrant French aristocrat turned farmer, the Letters from an
American Farmer has a good claim to be regarded as the first work
of American literature, at once intensely interesting in its own
right, and casting a long shadow of influence on both subsequent
American writers and European travel accounts of the moral,
spiritual and material topography of the new nation. ABOUT THE
SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made
available the widest range of literature from around the globe.
Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship,
providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable
features, including expert introductions by leading authorities,
helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for
further study, and much more.
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