SOURCE: “Sentimental Aesthetics and the American Revolution: Crèvecoeur's War Sketches,” in Eighteenth-Century Life, Vol. 5, No. 2, Winter, 1978, pp. 1-12.

In the following essay, Larson argues that Crèvecoeur applied the conventions of the European sentimental novel to the uniquely American experiences of colonialism and revolution, with uneven and often unsatisfying results.

After spending decades trying to identify wholly original, indigenous characteristics of American literature, critics finally seem willing to acknowledge the impact of English and European literary movements upon our literature. With the abandonment of literary isolationism, eighteenth-century American writing, which is clearly dependent upon British models, has gained respectability and received critical attention. Commentators have identified the major elements which link later eighteenth-century American literature to the wide-ranging movement of sensibility and sentiment, and they are beginning to fill in the details of the pattern. Terence Martin has traced the influence of the ideas of the Scottish...