Waldo Frank and the rediscovery of America, 1889-1929

This dissertation is a critical study of the work of Waldo Frank (1889-1967) from his earliest writings through the publication of The Re-discovery of America in 1929. It argues that Frank developed a critique of American life that combined complacent self-affirmation and searching self-criticism. Frank's awareness of his own participation in the shortcomings of American culture fueled his most passionate commitments: his leading role in the revival of interest in the study of American history and literature, his experiments in prose fiction, and his pursuit of a systematic spirituality of "wholeness.".;While other studies have generally treated one or another aspect of Frank's career, this dissertation encompasses his fiction, his essays, his writing on religion, his cultural criticism, and his work as an editor. Frank's iconoclastic mysticism represented an extension into the twentieth century of American literary antinomianism. He was a key figure in the early development of American modernism, adapting new ideas in psychology and techniques pioneered in the visual arts to the methods of fiction. In his cultural criticism he called for a renaissance in American arts and letters that would build on and transform the nation's past. His writings on race and ethnicity both romanticized oppressed peoples and delivered a searing assault on the cultural exploitation of black Americans. This study honestly catalogues Frank's weaknesses as a writer, but it argues that he remains a significant figure in American letters for the intensity of his prose, the depth of his self-awareness, and his analysis of literary production as an extension of a larger culture.