| Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit Revised Edition Contributor(s): Singley, Carol J. (Author) |
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ISBN: 052164612X ISBN-13: 9780521646123 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $39.89 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 1998 Annotation: 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. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General - Social Science | Gender Studies - Literary Criticism | Women Authors |
| Dewey: 813.52 |
| Series: Cambridge Studies in American Literature & Culture |
| Physical Information: 0.73" H x 5.98" W x 8.97" (0.80 lbs) 284 pages |
| Themes: - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Edith Wharton emerges in this book as a novelist of morals (rather than manners). Behind her polished portraits of upper-class New York life is a thoughtful, questioning spirit. This book analyzes Wharton's religion and philosophy in short stories and seven major novels. It considers Wharton in terms of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American intellectual and religious life. It also analyzes Wharton in terms of her gender and class, explaining how this aristocratic woman applies and yet transforms both the classical and Christian traditions that she inherits. |