SOURCE: '"Winesburg Ohio' as a Dance of Death," in American Literature, Vol. XLVHI, No. 4, January, 1997, pp. 525-42.

In the following essay, Stouck illuminates the tragic-world view offered in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio by highlighting its affinities with the "medieval concept of life as a Dance of Death. "

Sherwood Anderson's implied purpose in Winesburg, Ohio is "to express something" for his characters, to release them from their frustration and loneliness through his art. This motive is revealed in the prayer of Elizabeth Willard (mother of the nascent artist George Willard), who, sensing the approach of her death, says: "I will take any blow that may befall if but this my boy be allowed to express something for us both" (p. 40).¹ The view of art, however, in this book does not suggest the fulfillment of that prayer. Artists, like the old man in the introductory sketch and like Enoch...