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Recently, Google teamed up with a few of the largest academic libraries in the world, at Michigan, Cornell, Harvard, and Oxford Universities. The goal? Google is going to scan literature for whom the copyright has expired: Oxford wants Google to scan all works prior to 1901, Michigan has seven million volumes that it wants scanned (a six-year project), but Harvard, snooty as ever, will only allow forty thousand volumes scanned initially, to ensure that none of its fifteen million volumes will be corrupted or harmed.
This, of course, is not immediately in the offing. Google estimates at least a ten-year workload, even if scanning begins right away. Still, the resources made available will be astounding. I have yet to see an online collection of PDF books that was adequate, hence the number of links below that overlap and truly don´t cover the needs of students worldwide. I applaud the effort.
Source: Raleigh News & Observer, Section A, 14 December 2004.
The American Adam - My current research is focused on what scholars have called the "American Adam." This concept was formulated over generations, and in his 1950 work R. W. B. Lewis coined the term based on an entry in Emerson´s Journals, in which he wrote, "Here´s to the plain old Adam, the simple genuine self against the world." The single problem that scholars of American Literature frequently encounter is one of identity, an identity answered by Lewis´s work.
The American Adam, simply speaking, is an innocent man going forth into the wilderness seeking his identity as an adult in a fallen world. Examples abound of this simple paradigm in the American Romantic period and Realism & Naturalism. Ishmael in Moby Dick, White Jacket in White Jacket, Deerslayer in Fenimore Cooper´s Leatherstocking Tales, the title character in Hawthorne´s "Young Goodman Brown," and the indomitable Huck Finn.
The trouble is, by the twentieth century, the identity of the culture and, thereby, its protagonists had changed. The American Adam was, strictly speaking, still present; however, he had changed somewhat. He was now insular, seen as mentally unstable; a reaction to a hostile world in which instant and massive destruction could occur at the hands of a faceless enemy at any time. I am exploring the difference between the American Adam of old and the one we see now embodied in The Catcher in the Rye, Catch-22, The Slaughterhouse-Five, and so forth.
James Thomson´s The Seasons - I will be presenting a paper at the eighteenth annual DeBartolo Conference on Eighteenth-Century Literature in February 2005 (for more info, visit the USF site here). Thomson presented us with a divine vantage inspired by John Milton´s Paradise Lost. I will have the essay posted in its entirety following the presentation.
No Articles at this time.
My own List of what I consider the best in literature.
Need a paper edited? - This is the site of a good editor, also a friend of mine. Check him out.
NetLibrary - This site has a collection of online books, available to the public.
The Harlem Renaissance resource page, from Northern Kentucky University.
Literary Glosarry - I have never seen a more complete glossary online. From a Rutgers Professor.
Bartleby.com - An excellent resource for free books and PDF files.
Planet PDF - More free literature online
Penn State's Online E-books - an extremely comprehensive site with a number of great novels and poems.
Literary Glossary - A handy reference of Literary terms and definitions.
Barnes & Noble - You can find almost any out-of-print book here.