Perhaps Alone This Tome Atones . . .

This is perhaps the penultimate academic article I'll write, in the event that my still unpublished Milton paper never sees light. Here you are about to read the opening words from the introduction to my possibly scholarly swan song:

In our time of American literature's various ethnic and multicultural divisions, reflected in a darkened glass through the strife we see daily on the streets of our cities, a visit to an other time of greater unity might be worth the imaginative effort, possibly shedding light on how we Americans have gotten from where we were at mid-twentieth century to where we now find ourselves in our nation and our literature, namely, in a state of brilliant, if exaggerated disjunction, our external and internal borders lit up like glittering cities of glass, lovely, but fragile, crystal cathedrals. But perhaps that is mere simile. Perhaps we are made of stuff less brittle, more flexible than glass . . .

You can find these words of Americana and read further into what I, as an American, have to say about America in the time of that great American, Stephen Vincent Benét (1898-1943), if you look into the journal Foreign Literature Studies, for you'll find within volume 82, on pages 73-105 (May 2021), my full article, made possible by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies through the Institute of Foreign Literature Studies.