[37] I have considered the tragic emotions more fully in an article, “Melodrama and Tragedy,” _Publications of the Modern Language Association_, September, 1928. [38] Since this paper was written my attention has been called to “Humanism and Tragedy,” an admirable article by Mr. F. McEachran (_Nineteenth Century and After_, July, 1929). Based on Professor Babbitt’s three levels of human conduct, naturalistic, human, and religious, Mr. McEachran’s thesis is that tragedy, since it demands an assumption of human dignity, cannot develop in a naturalistic age like the present, and is difficult in a religious one. The age of Pericles, of Elizabeth, and of Louis XIV were humanistic; they were followed by naturalistic decadence in which man and nature were equated and tragedy became impossible. Mr. McEachran’s “human dignity” and my “heroism” seem equivalent. [39] It is to be noted, as further illustration of the anti-heroic tendency of modern thought, that critics have sought to explain Hamlet as not a hero but a psychopath. What Shakespeare wished his audience to feel, however, seems open to no doubt. [40] From _Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems_, Boni & Liveright, 1925. [41] Should I remind the reader that in thus generalising I admit exceptions? One such, whom I have discussed elsewhere (_Sewanee Review_, April, 1929) is, in my opinion, Joseph Conrad. _An American Tragedy_ ROBERT SHAFER I Mr. Theodore Dreiser’s critical friends have always been ready to admit his deficiencies as a literary artist, and these deficiencies are really extraordinary. Nevertheless, by universal consent Mr. Dreiser stands at the head of the realistic movement in American fiction, not merely because he is its pioneer, and has endured obloquy and even persecution for the Cause, but primarily on account of his seriousness and singleness of purpose, his depth of keen feeling, and his earnest reflectiveness. His work also anticipates in important respects the efforts of the post-realists and super-realists, so-called, and altogether has a present salience which insistently demands consideration. The work, however, cannot be assessed--cannot indeed be understood--apart from the man; and fortunately Mr. Dreiser has written much about himself.[42] He was born in 1871 in Terre Haute, Indiana, of German Catholic parents who struggled vainly against poverty. In the schools of another Indiana town he received the elements of an education, but apparently learned little of value to him beyond reading and writing. In boyhood and youth, in school or out, he became acquainted with a number of the better-known writers, chiefly of fiction, of the nineteenth century, but without gaining from them more than momentary entertainment. He has said that as a boy he “had no slightest opportunity to get a correct or even partially correct estimate of what might be called the mental A B abs of life.” [sic]