subliterary

Updated: May 31, 2025

We have had American drama for one hundred and fifty years, * but much of it, like our popular fiction and poetry, has been subliterary, more interesting to the student of social life and national character than to literary criticism in the narrow sense of that term. Few of our best known literary men have written for the stage.

Bliss Perry - The American Spirit in Literature : a chronicle of great interpreters