I think that, as a whole, Americans seem to be the most unimaginative of writers. They appear to delayed in realizing the wealth of information that surrounded them. British writers and poets alike always wrote about what was most familar to them, the world that surrounded them. It always appeared to me that American authors were always trying to hard to find things to write about and when they did, it was always clouded a message that was being conveyed. Take for example, Moby Dick, or any writing produced by Melville. The themes that Melville tried to convey were very powerful and meaningful. Yet, because of his overuse of descriptive language and his obsession with detail, readers become frustrated with the story itself. The best example I can use is from a recent experience with one of my students. I have this student in two English classes, an American Literature class and a British Literature class. He read MacBeth in the first class and he understood the text and was able to make connections to other literature and discuss it quite thoughtfully. In the next class, he read an excerpt of What Redburn Saw in Lancelotts-Hey. He, at the end of the exerpt,after asking various questions, discovered the theme or rather message that was being sent. But, he made the point of asking why did Melville used so much unecessary detail and language to get his point across. It may simply be my humble opinion, but I truly believe that American writers had the same types of resources available to them as the English or French, yet they didn't recognize their full potential. British literature is typically very frank in its content and meaning. American literature has taken some time to evolve to that level. I feel that there was pressure to compete with the writing and success from other countries, therefore American writers creativity and abilities were stifled. To say that there was a "poverty of materials" sounds to me to simply be another unimaginative American idea.