Abstract

The aim of this inquiry is to establish the proper place of H. L. Mencken's early study of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche in shaping the literary and intellectual climate in America, between 1908 and 1920. The study focuses on the writings of Theodore Dreiser, between 1912 and 1917; and on the works of the "Young Intellectuals" of roughly the same period---Walter Lippmann, Randolph Bourne, Waldo Frank, Van Wyck Brooks, and Lewis Mumford. The conclusions assert that Mencken's 1908 study of the philosophy of Nietzsche had a wider and deeper effect on the writing and thought of the period 1908--1920 than has been previously assumed, even by Mencken's own biographers. Mencken's work served as an introduction to the ideas of the German philosopher for many import ant writers and thinkers of that era, and subsequent constructions of Nietzsche's ideas were often a response---positive or negative to the interpretation that Mencken had set forth. These conclusions point to the importance of a reassessment of Mencken's early role as an interpreter and advocate of the ideas of Nietzsche in America, as well as a more careful consideration of the course of Nietzsche studies in the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century