Why is
he said to belong to the school of Cervantes? What specially impresses you
about Mark Twain's style?
CHAPTER VII
THE EASTERN REALISTS
FROM ROMANTICISM TOWARD REALISM.--The enormous circulation of magazines in
the United States has furnished a wide market for the writers of fiction.
Magazines have especially stimulated the production of short stories, which
show how much technique their authors have learned from Poe. The increased
attention paid to fiction has led to a careful study of its guiding
principles and to the formation of new rules for the practice of the art.
When we look back at the best work of earlier writers of American fiction,
we shall find that it is nearly all romantic. In the eighteenth century,
Charles Brockden Brown wrote in conformity to the principles of early
romanticism, and combined the elements of strangeness and terror in his
tales. The modified romanticism persisting through the greater part of the
nineteenth century demanded that the _unusual_ should at least be retained
in fiction as a dominating factor. Irving's _Rip Van Winkle_ has the older
element of the impossible, and _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ shows
fascinating combinations of the unusual.
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