ABSTRACT
The Americanness of the American novel is as readily apparent as it is elusive of definition. This chapter is not to discover the reluctant formula, the comprehensive statement of national identity, but to examine the evidences of this identity in the work of some individual American writers. First, however, it is desirable to lay down some critical premisses. The currently received version of the progress of American fiction contains, however, two anomalous premisses. The first—almost the essential hypothesis of 'ontological' criticism—is that the critical data are embodied in the work itself. The circumstances of living in a Puritan society so cohesive and so isolated from dissident opinion is not duplicated elsewhere, and it is in the developments briefly outlined above that its unique character most clearly appears, the first distinctively American experience.
