American Literary Realism, Critical Theory, and Intellectual Prestige, 1880–1995

Phillip Barrish traces the emergence of new ways of gaining intellectual prestige in the key works of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literary realism.

Phillip Barrish (Author)

9780521103800, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 December 2008

224 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.34 kg

"[Barrish's] prose is ...elegant, layered, and worth a second reading.... It should be an influential book in the ongoing debate about what `really matters' in literary-critical studies." Novel

Focusing on key works of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literary realism, Phillip Barrish traces the emergence of new ways of gaining intellectual prestige - that is, new ways of gaining cultural recognition as unusually intelligent, sensitive or even wise. Through extended readings of works by Henry James, William Dean Howells, Abraham Cahan and Edith Wharton, Barrish emphasises the differences between literary realist modes of intellectual and cultural authority and those associated with the rise of the social sciences. In doing so, he greatly refines our understanding of the complex relationship between realist writing and masculinity. Barrish further argues that understanding the dynamics of intellectual status in realist literature provides new analytic purchase on intellectual prestige in recent critical theory. Here he focuses on such figures as Lionel Trilling, Paul de Man, John Guillory and Judith Butler.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. William Dean Howells and the roots of realist taste
2. The 'facts of physical suffering', the literary intellectual and The Wings of the Dove
3. The 'genuine article': credit and ethnicity in The Rise of David Levinsky
4. What Nona knows
5. From reality, to materiality, to the real (and back again): the dynamics of distinction on the recent critical scene
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary theory [DSA]