This essay explores Stephen Crane's first volume of poetry ("The Black Riders and Other Lines") as an aesthetic and cultural paradox of the mid-1890s: a concentrated work where a contemporary and international vanguard movement of revolt and rejection in the arts and letters overlapped with a rearguard sacred tradition of consolidated institutional achievements, accepted beliefs, and richly elaborated forms. As such, "The Black Riders" stands as a striking and perhaps unique example of what may be called a Biblical poetics of fin de siècle. In his early twenties, without having completed any formal schooling and with no bulk of ascertainable readings on record, the author of "The Black Riders" may be said to have emerged out of the imposing Protestant tradition of the New World, confronting and disowning its body of doctrines and pieties – the "alien products of his kin," as Herbert Wells put it – while at the same time drawing heavily upon it. As part of "the expression in literary art of certain enormous repudiations," in Wells' memorable words again, Crane's ambitious efforts at verse were bound to impact the no less commanding tradition of the Protestant poetics that had dominated English and American culture since the early seventeenth century.
Child of Darkness: Stephen Crane and "The Black Riders and Other Lines"
NORI, Giuseppe
2014-01-01
Abstract
This essay explores Stephen Crane's first volume of poetry ("The Black Riders and Other Lines") as an aesthetic and cultural paradox of the mid-1890s: a concentrated work where a contemporary and international vanguard movement of revolt and rejection in the arts and letters overlapped with a rearguard sacred tradition of consolidated institutional achievements, accepted beliefs, and richly elaborated forms. As such, "The Black Riders" stands as a striking and perhaps unique example of what may be called a Biblical poetics of fin de siècle. In his early twenties, without having completed any formal schooling and with no bulk of ascertainable readings on record, the author of "The Black Riders" may be said to have emerged out of the imposing Protestant tradition of the New World, confronting and disowning its body of doctrines and pieties – the "alien products of his kin," as Herbert Wells put it – while at the same time drawing heavily upon it. As part of "the expression in literary art of certain enormous repudiations," in Wells' memorable words again, Crane's ambitious efforts at verse were bound to impact the no less commanding tradition of the Protestant poetics that had dominated English and American culture since the early seventeenth century.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
