Four Classic American Novels: The Scarlet Letter, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, Billy Budd
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Book Overview
These four landmark novels of nineteenth-century American literature have gained a permanent place in our culture as great classics. They are not only part of our national heritage, but masterpieces of world literature whose deep and lasting influence is felt to this day. The Scarlet Letter vividly records America's moral and historical roots in Puritan New England and masterfully re-creates a society's preoccupation with sin, guilt, and pride. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn carries readers along on Huck's unforgettable journey down the Mississippi in America's foremost comic epic--the first great novel in a truly American voice. The Red Badge of Courage re-creates the brutal reality of war and its psychological impact on a young Civil War soldier in one of the most moving and widely read American novels. Billy Budd, Sailor, and Other Stories joins the world's great tragic literature as a doomed seaman becomes the innocent victim of a clash between social authority and individual freedom.
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0553213628
ISBN13:9780553213621
Release Date:December 1992
Publisher:Bantam Classics
Length:896 Pages
Weight:0.85 lbs.
Dimensions:1.5" x 4.2" x 6.9"
Related Subjects
Adventure Man Vs. Nature Classics Contemporary Fiction Humanities Literary Literature Literature & FictionCustomer Reviews
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Four American masterpieces- what connects them?
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
What connects these four American masterpieces? Melville and Hawthorne were friends, and in a sense helped inspire each other. Wouldn't it then have made more sense to put together their two greatest masterpieces, ' The Scarlett Letter' and ' Moby Dick' Or is it only a matter of size and convenience that Melville's last work, and one of his great ones 'Billy Budd'is chosen for this volume? And why link with them Crane and Twain? True their best books are chosen and so of these four great American masters we have the best books of three. And only one's greatest masterpiece, and arguably the greatest prose masterpiece in American literature is left out. Yet how complain about the abundance of riches this volume offers? Each one of the four works here is a small world in itself. Hester Prynne ( A Scarlet Letter) Huck, Henry Fleming , and Billy Budd each is put through a kind of moral test. Two have more or less tragic ends (Hester and Billy Budd) and two have redemptive moral journeys which enable them to continue on their journeys of life, wiser and morally strengthened. This is great literature, the best America has to give. And the four taken together are if this is what the reader seeks, a bargain.
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