American Snobs: Transatlantic Novelists, Liberal Culture and the Genteel Tradition

Emily Coit

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2021

American Snobs

Transatlantic Novelists, Liberal Culture and the Genteel Tradition

Emily Coit

In the series Edinburgh Critical Studies in Atlantic Literatures and Cultures

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474475426

Overview
Contents

About this book

Reassesses American elitisms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century

Brings together the insights of recent Victorianist and Americanist scholarship in order to show how Adams, James, and Wharton engage with liberal thinking about whiteness, democracy, and citizenship.
Locates these authors in disciplinary history, revealing that their critical responses to Bostonian liberalism feed into the ideas that structure the study of US literary history during the twentieth century.
Offers a rich portrait of the Harvard intellectual milieu to which these authors respond, bringing fresh attention to their connections with thinkers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles William Eliot, Charles Eliot Norton, and Barrett Wendell.

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.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Series Editors’ Preface Laura Doyle, Colleen Glenney Boggs and Maria Cristina Fumagalli Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: Cultivation After Reconstruction: Impossible Educations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
Part II: The Remnant at Harvard: Whiteness, Higher Education and Democracy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
Conclusion: The Reign of the Genteel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	252
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	306

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 328
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9781474475426