Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

Cecilia Donohue (Independent Scholar - North America)

Ed. by Emory Elliott, University of California, Riverside
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1946

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

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Originally conceived as a play entitled

Proud Flesh

, the story of a politician's rise and fall was expanded into novel form after six years of writing and revising. Like Warren's previously published novels,

Night Rider

(1939) and

At Heaven's Gate

(1943),

All the King's Men

dealt with themes that Warren would revisit time and again in his novels: the protagonist in search of identity and meaning in his or her life; the dogged search for a father figure, with most of the candidates doomed to fail; the pursuit of the American Dream and the moral cost of such pursuit; the revelation of painful truth; and the human capacity for evil. However, critics have agreed overwhelmingly that Warren never addressed these issues as effectively as he did in

All the King's Men

, which was awarded the 1946…

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1548 words

Citation: Donohue, Cecilia. "All the King's Men". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6765, accessed 21 November 2024.]

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Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

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