The Red Badge of Courage and Selected Sh - Stephen Crane [109]
3. Crane’s style is often described as “impressionistic.” What does this term express to you? It might be interesting to find a passage that seems “impressionistic” and analyze the concrete uses of words that give it its special flavor.
4. Crane thought of himself as a “realist.” How do you understand this form? Fidelity to material actuality? A lot of descriptions? An absence of idealization or fantasy? A tough-mindedness about human emotions and motives? If Crane is realistic, in what sense?
5. Do you take the tall soldier to be an oddball or a representative type? Which of his characteristics make him either a special case or an every-man, subspecies Americanus?
FOR FURTHER READING
Biographies and Related Materials
The Correspondence of Stephen Crane. Edited by Stanley Wertheim. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Davis, Linda H. Badge of Courage: The Life of Stephen Crane. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
Stallman, R. W Stephen Crane: A Biography. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1968.
Wertheim, Stanley, and Paul M. Sorrentino. The Crane Log:A Documentary Life of Stephen Crane, 1871-1900. New York: G. K. Hall, 1994.
Historical Resources
Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. 4 vols. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, Inc., 1956. Since The Century magazine series was first collected in book form in 1887, this primary historical resource for Crane has been reprinted several times by several publishers. The 1956 edition is available in many American libraries. The essays involving the Battle of Chancellorsville are in volume 3.
Sears, Stephen W Chancellorsville. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. A well-researched and balanced modern account of the battle.
Selected Critical Studies
Bergon, Frank. Stephen Crane’s Artistry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.
Berryman, John. Stephen Crane. New York: Sloane, 1950.
Cady, Edwin H. Stephen Crane. Revised edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980.
Campbell, Donna M. Resisting Regionalism: Gender and Naturalism in American Fiction, 1885-1915. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997.
Dooley, Patrick K. The Pluralistic Philosophy of Stephen Crane. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.
LaFrance, Marston. A Reading of Stephen Crane. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.
Nagel, James. Stephen Crane and Literary Impressionism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1980.
Pizer, Donald, ed. Critical Essays on Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990.
Solomon, Eric. Stephen Crane: From Parody to Realism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966.
a
Savage race from Asia that marauded throughout Europe during the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. Also, an offensive term for people of Germanic ancestry, significant here because Germans comprised a good proportion of the troops in the Eleventh Corps.
b
Military slang used by veterans to taunt new recruits about their inexperience.
c
Short for Johnny Reb, slang for a Confederate soldier. The equivalent for a Union soldier was Billy Yank.
d
Dialect alteration of kit and caboodle, meaning “the whole thing.”
e
Mild oath probably originating in mythology—from Gemini, the twins. Several linguists, however, believe that the expression derives from a German phrase invoking Jesus.
f
Located in Saratoga County in upstate New York.
g
Mild oath invoking the devil.
h
Colloquialism for Jesus’ Rod, invoking Christ’s power and authority as shepherd. Some traditions believe that Christ possessed Moses’ rod. Several religious denominations would consider this phrase used in such a context as blasphemous.
i
The term skedaddle, meaning “desertion under fire,” became popular early during the Civil War.
j
Informal term for a man, derived from either curse or customer.
k
Person in a hopeless situation; several linguists believe this meaning derives from the word’s use as a racist term for an African American.
l
The Orange Turnpike, an east-west road between Orange Court House and Fredericksburg.
m
In Irish and Scottish folklore, a female