Abstract
In William Dean Howells’s short story ‘Editha’ the main structuring device of the plot is the conflict between the militaristic idealism of the relatives and friends of the heroine, whose name (Editha) reveals that she delights in battle-slaughter, and the relatives and friends of the hero, whose name (George) reveals a pacifist, agrarian disposition.
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Notes and References
William Dean Howells, ‘Editha’, in Willard Thorp (ed.), Great Short Works of American Realism (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 210–24.
Henry James, In the Cage & Other Tales. Morton Dauwen Zabel (ed.) (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), p. 205.
See John E. Tilford, Jr., ‘James the Old Intruder’, Modern Fiction Studies, 4 (Summer 1958), no. 2, 157–64.
Cf. Tony Tanner, The Reign of Wonder: Naivety and Reality in American Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1965), pp. 310–19.
William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking; Together with Four Related Essays Selected from The Meaning of Truth (New York: Longmans, Green, 1943), p. 233.
Percy Lubbock (ed.), The Letters of Henry James (London: Macmillan, 1920), ii, p. 85.
There is a rich literature on Henry’s pragmatism. See Richard A. Hocks, Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought: A Study in the Relationship between the Philosophy of William James and the Literary Art of Henry James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974);
Edward Rich. Levy, ‘Henry James and the Pragmatic Assumption: The Conditions of Perception’, Diss. (University of Illinois, 1964);
James Edwin Woodard, Jr., ‘Pragmatism and Pragmaticism in James and Howells’, Diss. (University of New Mexico, 1969);
Eliseo Vivas, ‘Henry and William: (Two Notes)’, The Kenyon Review 5 (Autumn 1943), no. 4, 580–94;
John Henry Raleigh, ‘Henry James: The Poetics of Empiricism’, PMLA, 66 (March 1951), no. 2, 107–23;
Henry Bamford Parkes, ‘The James Brothers’, The Sewanee Review 56 (April-June 1948), no. 2, 323–8;
William McMurray, ‘Pragmatic Realism in The Bostonians’, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 16 (March 1962), no. 4, 339–44;
Joseph J. Firebaugh, ‘The Pragmatism of Henry James’, The Virginia Quarterly Review, 27 (Summer 1951), no. 3, 419–35.
On the relationship between the brothers see e. g. Leon Edel, Henry James: The Untried Years 1843–1870 (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953), The Conquest of London 1870–1883 (1962), The Middle Years 1884–1894 (1963), The Treacherous Years 1895–1901 (1969), The Master 1901–1916 (1972);
F.O. Matthiessen, The James Family: Including Selections from the Writings of Henry James, Senior, William, Henry & Alice James (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948);
Gay Wilson Allen, William James: A Biography (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1967).
Henry James’s knowledge of philosophy in the ordinary sense of the word was shallow. But naturally William’s friends were also Henry’s friends. On the relations of the James family with Chauncey Wright, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Charles Sanders Peirce see Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James: As revealed in Unpublished Correspondence and Notes, Together With His Published Writings vol. I, ‘Inheritance and Vocation’, vol. II, ‘Philosophy and Psychology’ (London: Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press, 1935), also in briefer version The Thought and Character of William James (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948). Cf. also Levy, pp. 7–24.
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© 1982 Ralf Norrman
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Norrman, R. (1982). The ‘Finding a Formula’-Formula. In: The Insecure World of Henry James’s Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16824-8_5
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