(Download) "Journey to the Interior: The Influence of Xenophon's Anabasis on Thomas Wolfe's O Lost (Critical Essay)" by Thomas Wolfe Review ~ eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Journey to the Interior: The Influence of Xenophon's Anabasis on Thomas Wolfe's O Lost (Critical Essay)
- Author : Thomas Wolfe Review
- Release Date : January 01, 2007
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 184 KB
Description
In a 1947 essay introducing the William B. Wisdom Collection at Harvard, (1) Scribner's editor Maxwell Perkins explained that he and Wolfe had agreed to cut a scene depicting W. O. Gant's childhood from the Look Homeward, Angel prologue because it was not told through the "memories and senses of the boy, Eugene" or "compassed by that child's realization" (ix). However, until years later when a revised version of the scene reemerged in chapter 6 of book 1 in Of Time and the River, Perkins felt guilty. Perhaps his guilt not only indicates that he considered the cut scene valuable but also hints that the prologue in its original form enriched the text as a whole. In fact, the prologue introduces complicated structures and themes that Wolfe sought to establish. One motif, a series of literary references to an ancient Greek text, Xenophon's Anabasis, helps to frame the novel; these allusions resurface with the restoration of the original prologue in O Lost, which begins with a passage titled "Anabasis." The restoration of the prologue allows for deeper study of Wolfe's technique in developing Eugene Gant's coming of age as an artist; it introduces Wolfe's belief that the journey of the artist is one of epic proportions. First of all, through the background of W. O. Gant, Wolfe introduces themes of artistic destiny, legacy, and apprenticeship by examining the love of drama and poetry passed down from Gilbert Gaunt to W. O. Gant and by portraying Gant's failed attempts to become an artist. Also, while the prologue literally recounts Gant's boyhood in Pennsylvania and his relocation to the South, initiating the theme of the wandering exile, it also acts as a figurative map--a set of instructions to guide the reader. In short, it cues readers in to the type of book they are about to read. Wolfe titles the opening section of the prologue "Anabasis" to make undeniable the parallel to Xenophon's work, which combined history with autobiography to explore both the external and internal journeys of its characters, and, in doing so, constituted a new form of literature. Building upon these connections, Wolfe plots out the stages of Eugene's artistic apprenticeship through references to Anabasis.