Publications

Publication details [#11037]

Vanderlaan, Kimberly M. 2006. The arts and artists in the fiction of Henry James, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather. Newark, Del.. 297 pp.
Publication type
Ph.D dissertation
Publication language
English

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to demonstrate at least one important way in which three major American novelists at the turn from the nineteenth century into the twentieth - Henry James, Edith Wharton and Willa Cather - impacted critical and literary thought through their theories and fiction. They adhered to the premise that the sister arts furnished a critical language and rubric by which to assess various elements of culture, including fiction. All three authors borrowed images, metaphors, and patterns from the plastic arts - painting, sculpture, music, the dramatic arts, architecture - which allowed them to fill a critical vacuum by supplying them with the vocabulary to describe, qualify, assess, and render visible basic elements of their own craft. (Dissertation Abstracts)