The Red Badge of Courage »

Paul Sorrentino is Professor of English at Virginia Tech. He is the editor of The Correspondence of Stephen Crane and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for a forthcoming biography of Crane.

Published thirty years after the Civil War, this "impressionistic" American classic tells a war story in a thoroughly modern way - without a trace of romanticizing. Through the eyes of ordinary soldier Henry Fleming, we follow his psychological turmoil, from the excitement of patriotism to the bloody realities of battle and his flight from it. In the end, he overcomes his fear and disillusionment, and fights with courage.

Preface     vii
A Note on the Text     ix
The Text of The Red Badge of Courage     1
Textual Appendix     105
Emendations     105
The Manuscript of The Red Badge of Courage: Uncanceled Passages and the Discarded Chapter XII     106
Backgrounds and Sources     115
Stephen Crane's Life and Times: An Introduction     117
[Crane's Life and Times]   Frederick C. Crews     117
Letters on Art and The Red Badge of Courage   Stephen Crane     123
The Massing of Forces-The Forging of Masses   Jay Martin     127
The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s   John Higham     139
The Red Badge of Courage as a Novel of the Civil War     152
[The Historical Setting of The Red Badge of Courage]   Charles J. LaRocca     152
"That Was at Chancellorsville": The Factual Framework of The Red Badge of Courage   Harold R. Hungerford     155
[Private Fleming's Initial Combat at Chancellorsville]   Perry Lentz     166
Chancellorsville, Afternoon of 2 May 1863     175
Three Sketches of Chancellorsville from Battles and Leaders of the Civil War     176
Photographs of Men of the 124th New York Volunteers     179
A Definition of the War Novel   Eric Solomon     181
Tolstoy's Sebastopol and The Red Badge of Courage   J. C. Levenson     187
Criticism     193
Crane and The Red Badge of Courage: A Guide to Criticism   Donald Pizer     195
Early Estimates     229
The Veteran   Stephen Crane     229
A Remarkable Book   George Wyndham     233
A Controversy in The Dial     241
The Green Stone of Unrest   Frank Norris     248
The Modern Critical Revival     251
Stephen Crane: A Revaluation   R. W. Stallman     251
The Red Badge of Courage as Myth and Symbol   John E. Hart     262
[Stephen Crane: Naturalist]   Charles C. Walcutt     271
Crime and Forgiveness: The Red Badge in Time of War   John Fraser     279
[Impressionism in The Red Badge of Courage]   James Nagel     291
The Red Badge of Courage: Text, Theme, and Form   Donald Pizer     306
The Spectacle of War in Crane's Revision of History   Amy Kaplan     319
On Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage   James M. Cox      327
Nobody seems to know where we go": Uncertainty, History and Irony in The Red Badge of Courage   John E. Curran Jr     343
Unreal War in The Red Badge of Courage   James B. Colvert     355
Stephen Crane: A Chronology     367
Selected Bibliography     373