Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism, livre ebook

Exploring Edith Wharton’s engagement with global issues in her life and writing

Hailed for her remarkable social and psychological insights into the Gilded Age lives of privileged Americans, Edith Wharton, the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, was a transnational author who attempted to understand and appreciate the culture, history, and artifacts of the regions she encountered in her extensive travels abroad. Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism explores the international scope of Wharton’s life and writing, focusing on how her work connects with the idea of cosmopolitanism.

This volume illustrates the many ways Wharton engaged with global issues of her time. Contributors examine both her canonical and lesser-known works, including her art historical discoveries, political work, travel writing, World War I texts, and first novel. They consider themes of anarchism, race, imperialism, regionalism, and orientalism; Wharton’s treatment of contemporary marriage debates; her indebtedness to her literary predecessors; and her genre experimentation. Together, they demonstrate how Wharton’s struggle to balance her powerful local and national identifications with cosmopolitan values, resulted in a diverse, complex, and sometimes problematic relationship to a cosmopolitan vision.

List of Figures

Foreword

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction. Edith Wharton: A Citizen of the World
Meredith L. Goldsmith and Emily J. Orlando

Part 1. Cosmopolitan Ideas and Ideals

1. The Glimpses of the Moon and the Transatlantic Debate over Marital Reform
Clare Virginia Eby

2. Motifs of Anarchism in Edith Wharton’s The Children
Ferdâ Asya

3. “The Very Beginning of Things”: Reading Wharton through Charles Eliot Norton’s Life and Writings on Italy
William Blazek

Part 2. Cosmopolitan Places: From Italy to New York and Back

4. Wharton’s Italian Women: “My Beloved Romola”
Rita Bode

5. Possessing Italy: Wharton and American Tourists
Maureen E. Montgomery

6. Beyond the Guidebook: Edith Wharton’s Rediscovery of San Vivaldo
D. Medina Lasansky

7. Here/There, Now/Then, Both/And: Regionalism and Cosmopolitanism in Edith Wharton’s Old New York
June Howard

Part 3. Cosmopolitan Aesthetics

8. The Cosmopolitan at War: Edith Wharton and Transnational Material Culture
Mary Carney

9. “Eyes Filled with Splendor”: On Italy and the Saturated Gaze in The Custom of the Country
Sharon Kim

10. Orientalism, Modernism, and Gender in Edith Wharton’s Late Novels
Margaret A. Toth

Afterword: Edith Wharton and the Promise of Cosmopolitanism
Gary Totten

List of Contributors

Index