The Reign of Wonder : Naivety and Reality in American Literature

The adopted attitude towards reality and experience in American literature tends to be one of wonder and cultivated naivety rather than analysis and judgement.

In this book, Dr Tanner offers some reasons for this and seeks to demonstrate the peculiar importance of wonder in American literature, by examining a number of key writers and showing how they confronted and assimilated reality at the same time he considers some of the difficulties incurred by this approach and studies its effects on American style.