Edith Wharton - Matters of Mind and Spirit

Klappentext Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit considers Wharton as a novelist of morals rather than manners, a novelist who in the exercise of writing sought answers to profound spiritual and metaphysical questions. Carol Singley analyzes the short stories and seven novels in light of Wharton's religious and philosophical development and her attitudes toward Anglicanism, Calvinism, Transcendentalism, and Catholicism. Singley situates Wharton in the context of turn-of-the-century science, historicism, and aestheticism, reading her religious and philosophical outlook as an evolving response to the cultural crisis of belief. She further invokes the dynamics of class and gender as central to Wharton's quest, describing the ways in which the author accepted and yet transformed both the classical and Christian traditions that she inherited. Zusammenfassung Carol Singley makes the case for Wharton as a novelist of morals rather than of manners; a novelist who sought answers to profound spiritual and metaphysical questions. By locating Wharton in the library rather than the drawng room! Matters of Mind and Spirit gives this writer her literary and intellectual due! and offers fresh ways of interpreting her life and fiction. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction; 1. Priestess; 2. Spiritual homelessness; 3. Calvinist 'moral tortures'; 4. Fragile freedoms; 5. Platonic idealism; 6. Catholicism: fulfillment or concession; Works cited; Notes.

Product details

• Authors: Carol J. Singley, Carol J. (Rutgers University Singley
• Assisted by: Albert Gelpi (Editor), Ross Posnock (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.07.1995
• EAN: 9780521472357
• ISBN: 978-0-521-47235-7
• No. of pages: 284
• Series: Cambridge Studies in American; Cambridge Studies in American
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories