Product Description

This Norton Critical Edition of Stephen Crane’s classic 1895 Civil War novel is again based on the first published edition, conservatively edited. The Fourth Edition offers a broadened and restructured “Backgrounds and Sources” section that illuminates the social and intellectual climate of the 1890s and includes thought-provoking material by Jay Martin, Charles J. LaRocca, and Perry Lentz on Crane’s use of the Battle of Chancellorsville. “Criticism” includes an expanded introduction by Donald Pizer covering major critical approaches to the novel and fourteen assessments that reflect the revival critical interest in The Red Badge of Courage by, among others, R. W. Stallman, Charles C. Walcutt, John Fraser, Amy Kaplan, John E. Curran Jr., James B. Colvert, and Donald Pizer. 1 map; 3 photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #175222 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 392 pages

About the Author
Eric Carl Link is Hugh Shott Professor of English at North Georgia College &; State University. He is the author of The Vast and Terrible Drama: American Literary Naturalism in the Late Nineteenth Century and Neutral Ground: New Traditionalism and the American Romance Controversy.

Donald Pizer is Pierce Butler Professor of English Emeritus at Tulane University. He is the author of The Novels of Theodore Dreiser, Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism, and The Novels of Frank Norris, among others.

Customer Reviews

Stephen Crane's masterpiece
Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage is not so much a Civil War novel, but more a story of two young soldiers in the midst of a war much larger than either of them. The book only follows these two soldiers for a matter of weeks, but it spans a lifetime's worth of battles, both physical and introspective. By the end, the two young soldiers develop and change so drastically that they are entirely unrecognizable from the scars of war. Their transition from fresh, uncertain soldiers to hardened veterans is compelling to watch.
Having that said, this book is still a war novel. The beauty of this book, though, is that it does not focus on the mundane little facts of the Civil War, but brings you harshly into the dirty features of war itself. Crane keeps up a relentless pace that rarely lets up, throwing these two soldiers into the fray of combat time after time. His palpable and even grotesque descriptions of battle immerse you in with the characters, leaving you clinging on with dread and excitement. Vast vistas of trampled battlefields, lines of musket-bearing soldiers colliding with each other, and nineteenth century American landscape are spread right in front of you. If you are looking for a textbook of the Civil War, this is not it. If you are looking for a raw piece of war fiction, you have found it.
The Red Badge of Courage is deserving of its title as a classic and as one of the greatest war novels ever written. The story of these two young soldiers intertwined with the beast of war is a great read that I recommend to anyone.