American Snobs

Transatlantic Novelists, Liberal Culture and the Genteel Tradition

Emily Coit (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

328 Seiten

2022
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4744-7541-9 (ISBN)

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Arguing that Henry Adams, Henry James and Edith Wharton articulated their political thought in response to the liberalism that reigned in Boston and, more specifically, at Harvard University.

Reassesses American elitisms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
Arguing that Henry Adams, Henry James and Edith Wharton articulated their political thought in response to the liberalism that reigned in Boston and, more specifically, at Harvard University, this book shows how each of these authors interrogated that liberalism's arguments for education, democracy and the political duties of the cultivated elite. Coit shows that the works of these authors contributed to a realist critique of a liberal New England idealism that fed into the narrative about 'the genteel tradition', which shaped the study of US literature during the twentieth century.

Emily Coit is Assistant Instructional Professor in English at the University of Chicago. She studies the history of thinking about education, citizenship, and democracy. Her work has appeared ELH, The Henry James Review, Nineteenth-Century Literature, and several edited collections. She is currently co-editing A Landscape Painter and Other Tales, a volume of short stories for the Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part I. Cultivation After Reconstruction: Impossible Educations
1. Slavery, Subjection, and Culture in Adams's Democracy and Esther
2. The Education of the People in James's The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima
3. The Professor and the Mob in Wharton's The Valley of Decision

Part II. The Remnant at Harvard: Whiteness, Higher Education, and Democracy
4. Universal White: Discrimination and Selection in James's American Scene
5. The Tenth Mind: Adams and the Action of the Remnant
6. Pure English: Wharton and the Elect

Conclusion: The Reign of the Genteel

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	21.11.2022
Reihe/Serie	Edinburgh Critical Studies in Atlantic Literatures and Cultures
Verlagsort	Edinburgh
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-4744-7541-8 / 1474475418
ISBN-13	978-1-4744-7541-9 / 9781474475419
Zustand	Neuware