In this collection of his essays and a sampling of his letters, John Jay Chapman (1862-1933) embraces the world at large. Predicting the depersonalization of twentieth-century society, Chapman argues that a civilization based upon a commerce which is in all its parts corruptly managed will present a social life which is unintelligent and mediocre, made up of people afraid of each other, whose ideas are shopworn, whose manners are self-conscious. Chapman should be studied more carefully and at full length, Edmund Wilson wrote in 1929, but in the meantime, what is most important is to have his essays made accessible.... If his books were reprinted and read, we should recognize that we possess in John Jay Chapman -- by reason of the intensity of the spirit, the brilliance of the literary gift and the continuity of the thought which they embody -- an American classic. Jacques Barzun has observed, We have produced very few great critics, but John Jay Chapman equals any of his foreign contemporaries. An American original, Chapman is a tonic to cynicism and an antidote to a society gone flaccid and complacent.
Emerson and Other Essays" is a set of upsetting pieces written by means of American essayist and critic John Jay Chapman within the overdue 1800s and early 1900s. Chapman covers a huge range of philosophical and cultural topics on this series, which suggests off his eager thoughts and deep reflections. The main piece is the name article on Ralph Waldo Emerson, which gives a deep analysis of the transcendentalist philosopher's ideas and how they have got affected intellectual American lifestyles. Chapman digs deep into Emerson's principle, displaying the way it applies to modern-day international and the way it has changed subculture as a whole. The series consists of writings with the aid of authors aside from Emerson that talk approximately a huge range of topics, including literature, society, and ethics. This creator, Chapman, wrote in a way that turned into smooth to recognize, intellectually rigorous, and deeply linked to the tradition of his time. "Emerson and Other Essays" now not most effective gives readers a more entire understanding of Emerson's thoughts, however it also offers them a deeper check out Chapman's very own thoughts on the complicated nature of lifestyles. The essays that Chapman wrote nevertheless show how clever he become and how he could specific deep ideas with eloquence and depth. This makes the collection an important part of American literary and philosophical debate.
First published in 1931, this fascinating book provides a study of famous Greek satirist and rhetorician, Lucian of Samosata, as well as an analysis of the Classical Greek philosopher Plato’s Symposium in the light of Lucian’s criticism. An essay in popular form, whose aim is really to call attention to the Flower and Harmon translations and thereby, ultimately, to Lucian himself. “LUCIAN is a mine of entertainment, a treasury of information. He is a humorist, a man of wit, fancy, irony, earnestness, solemnity, subtle humor, broad burlesque, a man of immense reading and incredible fluidity of thought and word, who writes sometimes with the care of a gem-cutter, and often with the freedom and splash of Shakespeare. He is the latest of the wits of antiquity and the earliest of the modern humorists. He has left eighty pieces, long and short, of very unequal excellence, the paperasse of a great littérateur. Among these things are a few masterpieces which show a finish and subtlety that rank them with the best Hellenic handiwork. The serpent of immortality lies coiled within them.”—John Jay Chapman
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