Stevens' Europe
delicate clinkings and total grandeur
pp. 41-57
in: Bart Eeckhout, Edward Ragg (eds), Wallace Stevens across the atlantic, Berlin, Springer, 2008Abstract
Americans have always thought that all of English literature belongs to them. English is their language and its literature naturally part of their heritage and identity, and all of European culture, too, for that matter, because in the beginning they were almost all Europeans. They all have a share of Whitman's inclusiveness and eclecticism. The British, in their very successful insularity, even now do not accept American literature as part of their tradition.