Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism

by Meredith L. Goldsmith (Editor), Emily J. Orlando (Editor)

Overview

“These energizing, excellent essays address the international scope of Wharton’s writing and contribute to the growing fields of transatlantic, hemispheric, and global studies.”—Carol J. Singley, author of A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton
 
“Readers will emerge with a new respect for Wharton’s engagement with the world around her and for her ability to convey her particular vision in her literary works.”—Julie Olin-Ammentorp, author of Edith Wharton’s Writings from the Great War
 
Hailed for her remarkable social and psychological insights into the Gilded Age lives of privileged Americans, Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, was also a transnational author who cultivated contradictory approaches to identity, difference, and belonging. As literary studies continue to expand beyond nation-based topics, readers are becoming more interested in the international scope of her life and writing.

Edith Wharton and Cosmopolitanism shows that Wharton was highly engaged with global issues of her time, due in part to her extensive travel abroad. Examining both her canonical and lesser-known works and including her art historical discoveries, her political writings, and her travel writing, the essays in this volume explore Wharton’s diverse, complex, and sometimes problematic relationship to a cosmopolitan vision.
 
 
Contributors: Ferdâ Asya | William Blazek | Rita Bode | Donna Campbell | Mary Carney | Clare Virginia Eby | June Howard | Meredith L. Goldsmith | Sharon Kim | D. Medina Lasansky | Maureen Montgomery | Emily J. Orlando | Margaret A. Toth | Gary Totten

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813062815
Publisher:	University Press of Florida
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Meredith L. Goldsmith, professor of English at Ursinus College, is coeditor of Middlebrow Moderns: Popular American Women Writers of the 1920s. Emily J. Orlando, associate professor of English at Fairfield University, is the author of Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts.
 
 

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Donna Campbell                                                                                                     
Acknowledgments

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

Part 1. Cosmopolitan Ideas and Ideals

1.         The Glimpses of the Moon and the Trans-Atlantic Debate over Marital Reform
Claire Eby

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

3.         Reading Wharton through Charles Eliot Norton’s 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 Montgomery

6.         Beyond the Guidebook: Edith Wharton’s Rediscovery of San Vivaldo
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:” Italy and the Saturation of the Gaze in The Custom of the Country
Sharon Kim

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

Afterword: Edith Wharton and the Promise of Cosmopolitanism
Gary Totten

Notes
Index