American snobs : transatlantic novelists, liberal culture and the genteel tradition / Emily Coit.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Coit, Emily, author.

Series:

Edinburgh critical studies in Atlantic literatures and cultures.

Edinburgh scholarship online.

Edinburgh critical studies in Atlantic literatures and cultures

Edinburgh scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Liberalism--Massachusetts--Boston--History--19th century.

Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937.

James, Henry, 1843-1916.

Adams, Henry, 1838-1918.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (328 pages).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh, Scotland : Edinburgh University Press, [2021]

Summary:

This work reassesses American elitisms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It argues 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, showing 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.

Contents:

Intro

Acknowledgements

Series Editors' Preface

Introduction

Part I: Cultivation After Reconstruction: Impossible Educations

1. Slavery, Subjection and Culture in Adams's Democracy and Esther

The Virgin and the Favourite

Beasts and Things that Crawl

Struggle for Mastery: Pedagogies, Marriage Plots

2. The Education of the People in James's The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima

The People and the Freedmen

The Schoolmarm and the Southerner

The Happier Few and the Miserable Many

3. The Professor and the Mob in Wharton's The Valley of Decision

Born Readers: Race and the Reading Citizenry

Idealism and Realism

The Learned Lady

Part II: The Remnant at Harvard: Whiteness, Higher Education and Democracy

4. Universal White: Discrimination and Selection in James's American Scene

Numbers and the Remnant

Diversity, Distinction and the Note of the Exclusive

Serene Puritan Crânerie: James and the Genteel Tradition

5. The Tenth Mind: Adams and the Action of the Remnant

Better Men: The Talented Tenth and the Remnant at Harvard

Bostonian Calm and the Action of the Scholar

Education and Power: Schools, Schoolmasters, Truants

The Type of Passivity: Adams and the Genteel Tradition

6. Pure English: Wharton and the Elect

Aristocracies: The Value of Duration

Doctrines of Election: The Puritan Liberal and the Last Calvinist

Purement Anglo-Saxonne: Puritans and Patroons

Colonial Mansions: Wharton and the Genteel Tradition

Conclusion: The Reign of the Genteel

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4744-7543-4

1-4744-9598-2

1-4744-7542-6

OCLC:

1244812344