The Project Gutenberg EBook of Inquiries and Opinions, by Brander Matthews

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Title: Inquiries and Opinions

Author: Brander Matthews

Release Date: September 25, 2005 [EBook #16746]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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INQUIRIES AND OPINIONS

Copyright, 1907, by
BRANDER MATTHEWS

_Published September, 1907_

TO MY FRIEND AND FELLOW CRAFTSMAN
HENRY ARTHUR JONES

CONTENTS

PAGE

I _Literature in the New Century_ 1

II _The Supreme Leaders_ 27

III _An Apology for Technic_ 49

IV _Old Friends with New Faces_ 73

V _Invention and Imagination_ 95

VI _Poe and the Detective-story_ 111

VII _Mark Twain_ 137

VIII _A Note on Maupassant_ 167

IX _The Modern Novel and the Modern Play_ 179

X _The Literary Merit of our Latter-day Drama_ 205

XI _Ibsen the Playwright_ 227

XII _The Art of the Stage-manager_ 281

LITERATURE IN THE NEW CENTURY

[This paper was read on September 24th, 1904, in the section of
Belles-lettres of the International Congress of the Arts and Sciences,
held at St. Louis.]

There is no disguising the difficulty of any attempt to survey the whole
field of literature as it is disclosed before us now at the opening of a
new century; and there is no denying the danger of any effort to declare
the outlook in the actual present and the prospect in the immediate
future. How is it possible to project our vision, to foresee whither the
current is bearing us, to anticipate the rocks ahead and the shallows
whereon our bark may be beached?

But one reflection is as obvious as it is he