The Western canon is the embodiment of high-culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that are highly cherished across the Western hemisphere , such works having achieved the status of classics .
130-565: The Great American Novel (sometimes abbreviated as GAN ) is the term for a canonical novel that generally embodies and examines the essence and character of the United States . The term was coined by John William De Forest in an 1868 essay and later shortened to GAN. De Forest noted that the Great American Novel had most likely not been written yet. Practically, the term refers to a small number of books that have historically been
260-429: A Salon article, that "The presumption and the belligerence embodied in this ideal have put off many American women writers". She also noted that many characters in Great American Novel candidates are male: "the notion that a female figure might serve the same purpose undermines the very concept of the Great American Novel". Although British analyst Faye Hammill noted that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos ,
390-665: A canon ensured a book's preservation as the best way to retain information about a civilization. In contemporary use, the Western canon defines the best of Western culture . In the ancient world, at the Alexandrian Library , scholars coined the Greek term Hoi enkrithentes ["the admitted", "the included"] to identify the writers in the canon. Although the term is often associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature, music and art, etc. from all traditions, such as
520-477: A "tableau" of American society, and said that the novel would "paint the American soul" and capture "the ordinary emotions and manners of American existence". Similarly, Daniel Pierce Thompson said it had to be distinctly American. Although De Forest espoused praise and critique for contemporaneous novels, he ultimately concluded that the Great American Novel had yet to be written. The essay's publication coincided with
650-609: A canon of literature is the question of authority; who should have the power to determine what works are worth reading? Charles Altieri , of the University of California, Berkeley , states that canons are "an institutional form for exposing people to a range of idealized attitudes." It is according to this notion that work may be removed from the canon over time to reflect the contextual relevance and thoughts of society. American historian Todd M. Compton argues that canons are always communal in nature; that there are limited canons for, say
780-526: A commonplace writer"). Such classification were initiated with the Greeks' ranking their cultural works, with the word canon (ancient Greek κανών, kanṓn: "measuring rod, standard"). Similarly, early Christian Church Fathers declared as canon the authoritative texts of the New Testament , preserving them given the expense of vellum and papyrus and mechanical book reproduction. Thus, being included in
910-421: A critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked. One of the main objections to
1040-576: A former U.S. Open Tennis Championship runner-up who became governor of Rhode Island. At the time, Wharton described the main house as "incurably ugly.” Wharton agreed to pay $ 80,000 for the property, and she spent thousands more to alter the home's facade, decorate the interior, and landscape the grounds. In 1902, Wharton designed The Mount , her estate in Lenox, Massachusetts , which survives, today, as an example of her design principles. She wrote several of her novels there, including The House of Mirth (1905),
1170-450: A general reevaluation of women's historical and academic contributions in response to the belief that women's lives and contributions have been underrepresented as areas of scholarly interest. However, in Britain and America at least women achieved major literary success from the late eighteenth century, and many major nineteenth-century British novelists were women, including Jane Austen ,
1300-484: A golden age. In addition to Bach and Beethoven, the other major figures from this period were George Frideric Handel , Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836. Edith Wharton Edith Newbold Wharton ( / ˈ hw ɔːr t ən / ; née Jones ; January 24, 1862 – August 11, 1937)
1430-517: A hostile view was expressed that emphasis on their importance had been an attempt by Eliot and his followers to impose a 'high Anglican and royalist literary history' on 17th-century English poetry. The American critic Yvor Winters suggested in 1939 an alternative canon of Elizabethan poetry , which would exclude the famous representatives of the Petrarchan school of poetry, represented by Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser . Winters claimed that
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#17328490197251560-575: A literary style labeled as magic realism , which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace Aracataca ), and most of them explore the theme of solitude . On his death in April 2014, Juan Manuel Santos , the President of Colombia, described him as "the greatest Colombian who ever lived." Mario Vargas Llosa , (b. 1936)
1690-408: A literature survey class, or an English department reading list, but there is no such thing as one absolute canon of literature. Instead, there are many conflicting canons. He regards Bloom's "Western Canon" as a personal canon only. The process of defining the boundaries of the canon is endless. The philosopher John Searle has said, "In my experience there never was, in fact, a fixed 'canon'; there
1820-461: A memoir. In 1873, Wharton wrote a short story and gave it to her mother to read. Stinging from her mother's critique, Wharton decided to write only poetry . While she constantly sought her mother's approval and love, she rarely received either, and their relationship was a troubled one. Before she was 15, Wharton wrote Fast and Loose (1877). In her youth, she wrote about society. Her central themes came from her experiences with her parents. She
1950-497: A narrow interpretation of the West, dominated by British and American culture, at least under contemporary circumstances, prompting demands for a more diversified canon amongst the hemisphere. A classic is a book, or any other work of art, accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy. In the second-century Roman miscellany Attic Nights , Aulus Gellius refers to writers as "classicus... scriptor, non proletarius" ("A distinguished, not
2080-457: A nation. Tony Tulathimutte similarly dismissed it as "a comforting romantic myth, which wrongly assumes that commonality is more significant than individuality". Multiple commentators have noted the concept's relation to racial and national identity, be it influence from by large-scale immigration , which brought forth authors closely aligned with the Great American Novel or novels detailing marginalized peoples, some furthermore trying to "bridge
2210-456: A novel of the same name . Bernard F. Jr. Rogers said that Kurt Vonnegut 's "entire career might be characterised as an attempt to produce something like "the GAN", but of its own time". The 1970s saw a general resurgence of the concept, with The New York Times using the phrase the most in their history, a total of 71 times. The revival was perhaps the result of social change and related anxieties and
2340-452: A novel to be the Great American Novel it had to be ubiquitous and notable, and analyze United States through a moral context. De Forest, similarly saw the Great American Novel as having to capture the "essence" of America, its quality irrelevant. Norris considered the musings upon what made a novel "great" and/or "American" to showcase patriotic insecurity. Mohsin Hamid echoed the idea that the GAN
2470-432: A part of a larger national, cultural and political consolidation. According to JSTOR Daily 's Grant Shreve, as the concept grew, concrete criteria for the Great American Novel developed: Additionally, Shreve states, referencing Buell, that "several 'templates' or 'recipes' for the Great American Novel emerged. ... Recipe 1 is to write a novel that is 'subjected to a series of memorable rewritings.' ... Recipe 2
2600-711: A poem under a pseudonym in the New York World, in 1879. In 1880, she had five poems published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly , an important literary magazine. Despite these early successes, she was not encouraged by her family or her social circle, and though she continued to write, she did not publish anything more until her poem "The Last Giustiniani" was published in Scribner's Magazine in October 1889. Between 1880 and 1890, Wharton put her writing aside to participate in
2730-590: A profound influence on medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late Antiquity into the Renaissance , and his views were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics . In metaphysics, Aristotelianism profoundly influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophical and theological thought during the Middle Ages and continues to influence Christian theology , especially
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#17328490197252860-530: A story. Wharton began writing poetry and fiction as a young girl, and she attempted to write her first novel at the age of 11. Her mother's criticism quashed her ambition, however, and she turned to poetry. She was 15 years old when her first published work appeared, a translation of a German poem "Was die Steine Erzählen" ("What the Stones Tell") by Heinrich Karl Brugsch , for which she was paid $ 50. Her family did not want her name to appear in print, since writing
2990-609: A student's education, such as Plato's Republic , or Dante's Divine Comedy . Such programs often focus exclusively on Western culture. Their employment of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the Great Books do not fall neatly under the prerogative of a single contemporary academic discipline. Great Books programs often include designated discussion groups as well as lectures, and have small class sizes. In general students in such programs receive an abnormally high degree of attention from their professors, as part of
3120-568: Is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature . One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his books have sold over thirteen million copies in sixty-three languages, making him the country's best-selling writer. Pamuk is the author of novels including The White Castle , The Black Book , The New Life , My Name Is Red , Snow , The Museum of Innocence , and A Strangeness in My Mind . He
3250-533: Is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature . Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom . Upon announcing
3380-778: Is a list of books considered to be "essential", and it can be published as a collection (such as Great Books of the Western World , Modern Library , Everyman's Library or Penguin Classics ), presented as a list with an academic's imprimatur (such as Harold Bloom 's ), or be the official reading list of a university. In The Western Canon Bloom lists "the major Western writers" as Dante Alighieri , Geoffrey Chaucer , Miguel de Cervantes , Michel de Montaigne , William Shakespeare , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , William Wordsworth , Charles Dickens , Leo Tolstoy , James Joyce and Marcel Proust . A university or college Great Books Program
3510-518: Is a program inspired by the Great Books movement begun in the United States in the 1920s by John Erskine of Columbia University , which proposed to improve the higher education system by returning it to the western liberal arts tradition of broad cross-disciplinary learning. These academics and educators included Robert Hutchins , Mortimer Adler , Stringfellow Barr , Scott Buchanan , Jacques Barzun , and Alexander Meiklejohn . The view among them
3640-455: Is indicative of insecurity, connecting it to a "colonial legacy". Commentators have said that the concept is exclusively American in nature. Journalist John Walsh offered a national equal in the form of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy 's War and Peace (1869); Buell felt that Australia was the only country to replicate America's search. Scholes said that the Great American Novel has always been thought of adjacent to European literature. David Vann
3770-672: Is the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University , where he teaches writing and comparative literature . Born in Istanbul , Pamuk is the first Turkish Nobel laureate. He is also the recipient of numerous other literary awards. My Name Is Red won the 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger , 2002 Premio Grinzane Cavour , and 2003 International Dublin Literary Award . Octavio Paz Lozano (1914–1998)
3900-709: Is the generously illustrated Italian Villas and Their Gardens of 1904, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish . Over the course of her life, she crossed the Atlantic 60 times. In Europe, her primary destinations were Italy, France, and England. She also went to Morocco. She wrote many books about her travels, including Italian Backgrounds and A Motor-Flight through France . Her husband, Edward Wharton, shared her love of travel and for many years, they spent at least four months of each year abroad, mainly in Italy. Their friend, Egerton Winthrop, accompanied them, on many journeys there. In 1888,
4030-433: Is what Buell calls 'the romance of the divide.' Novels of this kind ... imagine national (and geographic) rifts in the 'form of a family history and/or heterosexual love affair.' ... Recipe 3, a 'narrative centering on the lifeline of a socially paradigmatic figure ... whose odyssey tilts on the one side toward picaresque and on the other toward a saga of personal transformation, or failure of such.'" From
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4160-453: Is what it does not tell: her criticism of Lucretia Jones [her mother], her difficulties with Teddy, and her affair with Morton Fullerton, which did not come to light until her papers, deposited in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library , were opened in 1968. On June 1, 1937, Wharton was at her French country home (shared with architect and interior decorator Ogden Codman ), where she
4290-499: The American Revolution , and, by the mid-18th century, the possibility of American literature exceeding its European counterparts began to take shape, as did that of the Great American Novel, this time being the genesis of novels that would later be considered the Great American Novel. The term "Great American Novel" originated in an 1868 essay by American Civil War novelist John William De Forest . De Forest saw it serving as
4420-626: The Brontë family , Elizabeth Gaskell , and George Eliot . There were also three major female poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson . In the twentieth century there were also many major female writers, including Katherine Mansfield , Dorothy Richardson , Virginia Woolf , Eudora Welty , and Marianne Moore . Notable female writers in France include Colette , Simone de Beauvoir , Marguerite Yourcenar , Nathalie Sarraute , Marguerite Duras and Françoise Sagan . Much of
4550-567: The Chinese classics . With regard to books, what makes a book "classic" has concerned various authors, from Mark Twain to Italo Calvino , and questions such as "Why Read the Classics?", and "What Is a Classic?" have been considered by others, including T. S. Eliot , Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve , Michael Dirda , and Ezra Pound . The terms "classic book" and Western canon are closely related concepts, but are not necessarily synonymous. A "canon"
4680-652: The Germans invaded Belgium in the fall of 1914 and Paris was flooded with Belgian refugees, she helped to set up the American Hostels for Refugees, which managed to get them shelter, meals, and clothes, and eventually created an employment agency to help them find work. She collected more than $ 100,000 on their behalf. In early 1915, she organized the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which gave shelter to nearly 900 Belgian refugees who had fled, when their homes were bombed by
4810-501: The Middle East , and South America. Writers from Africa, Turkey, China, Egypt, Peru, and Colombia, Japan, etc., have received Nobel prizes since the late 1960s. Writers from Asia and Africa have also been nominated for, and also won, the Booker prize in recent years. Susan Hardy Aitken argues that the Western canon has maintained itself by excluding and marginalising women, whilst idealising
4940-810: The Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Roman Catholic Church . Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as "The First Teacher" ( Arabic : المعلم الأول ). His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics . The vast body of Christian philosophy is typically represented on reading lists mainly by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas . The academic canon of early modern philosophy generally includes Descartes , Spinoza , Leibniz , Locke , Berkeley , Hume , and Kant . Major philosophers of
5070-421: The Renaissance include Niccolò Machiavelli , Michel de Montaigne , Pico della Mirandola , Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno , Marsilio Ficino and Gemistos Plethon . The seventeenth century was important for philosophy, and the major figures were Francis Bacon , Thomas Hobbes , René Descartes , Blaise Pascal , Baruch Spinoza , John Locke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . Major philosophers of
5200-483: The humanities ). Knox used the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males" as the title of his lecture and his subsequent book of the same name, in both of which Knox defended the continuing relevance of classical culture to modern society. Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that such criticisms are misguided and/or disingenuous. As John Searle , Professor of Philosophy at
5330-468: The wider African diaspora of writers in Britain, France, Latin America, and Africa. This correlated largely with the shift in social and political views during the civil rights movement in the United States. The first global recognition came in 1950 when Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Chinua Achebe 's novel Things Fall Apart helped draw attention to African literature . Nigerian Wole Soyinka
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5460-528: The "form of a family history and/or heterosexual love affair"—race often plays a role. The third variety encapsulates the American Dream and see its protagonist rise from obscurity. Fourthly, novels which are composed of a diverse cast of characters "imagined as social microcosms or vanguards " and who are placed with events and crises that serve to "constitute an image of 'democratic' promise or dysfunction". Buell also said speculative science fiction may be
5590-485: The 1990s the concept of the Western canon was vehemently condemned, just as earlier Modern Library lists had been criticized as "too American," Modern Library responded by preparing new lists of "100 Best Novels" and "100 Best Nonfiction" compiled by famous writers, and later compiled lists nominated by book purchasers and readers. Some intellectuals have championed a "high conservative modernism" that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny
5720-471: The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Many philosophers today agree that Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception. Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "The safest general characterization of
5850-406: The 21st century, Stephens Shapiro said that "Maybe the GAN is a theme that rises in interest when the existing world system is amidst transformation, as America's greatness of all kinds swiftly fades away." When asked in a 2004 interview if the Great American Novel could be written, Norman Mailer —who had long been interested in the idea—said it could not, for United States had become too developed of
5980-727: The American Protestant section of the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles, "with all the honors owed a war hero and a chevalier of the Legion of Honor ... a group of some one hundred friends sang a verse of the hymn 'O Paradise'..." Despite not publishing her first novel until she was forty, Wharton became an extraordinarily productive writer. In addition to her 15 novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories, she published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, and
6110-585: The Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller . He is best known to Western readers for his 1987 novel Red Sorghum Clan , of which the Red Sorghum and Sorghum Wine volumes were later adapted for the film Red Sorghum . In 2012, Mo was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952)
6240-601: The European intellectual filter. This view of African-American literature as a tool in the struggle for African-American political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, most famously by W. E. B. Du Bois . Since the 1960s the Western literary canon has been expanded to include writers from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This is reflected in the Nobel Prizes awarded in literature. Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972)
6370-664: The European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato ." Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to Early Islamic philosophy , the European Renaissance , and the Age of Enlightenment . Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens . He is widely considered
6500-465: The French administration, Lyautey, and particularly, his wife. During the post-war years, she divided her time between Hyères and Provence , where she finished The Age of Innocence , in 1920. She returned to the United States only once, after the war, to receive an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1923. The Age of Innocence (1920) won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton
6630-759: The Germans. Aided by her influential connections in the French government, she and her long-time friend, Walter Berry (then president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris), were among the few foreigners in France allowed to travel to the front lines, during World War I. She and Berry made five journeys, between February and August 1915, which Wharton described in a series of articles that were first published in Scribner's Magazine and later as Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort , which became an American bestseller. Travelling by car, Wharton and Berry drove through
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#17328490197256760-687: The Great American Novel concept held a narrow view of the nation, simply being concerned with "Main Street". At this time, it also grew to become associated with masculine values. Despite this critical disregard, many writers, prepped with "templates" and "recipes" for the matter, sought to create the next Great American Novel; Upton Sinclair and Sinclair Lewis both sought to create the Great American Novel with The Jungle (1906) and Babbit (1924), respectively. William Carlos Williams and Clyde Brion Davis released satirical explorations both entitled The Great American Novel – Philip Roth would later release
6890-588: The Great American Novel—titled as such—Roth's in the 1970s, a time of prosperity for the concept. Equivalents to and interpretations of the Great American Novel have arisen. Writers and academics have commented upon the term's pragmatics , the different types of novels befitting of title and the idea's relation to race and gender. The development of American literature coincided with the nation's development, especially of its identity . Calls for an "autonomous national literature" first appeared during
7020-548: The Jones family in Europe during this time. After returning to the United States with her mother, Wharton continued her courtship with Stevens, announcing their engagement in August 1882. The month the two were to marry, the engagement ended. Wharton's mother, Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander Jones, moved back to Paris in 1883, and she lived there until her death in 1901. On April 29, 1885, at
7150-651: The Native or Plain Style anti-Petrarchan movement had been undervalued and argued that George Gascoigne (1525–1577) "deserves to be ranked […] among the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the century, and perhaps higher". Towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was increasingly disputed. In the twentieth century there was a general reassessment of the literary canon , including women's writing , post-colonial literatures , gay and lesbian literature , writing by racialized minorities, working people's writing, and
7280-714: The Souls of Today's Students (1987), argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great classics that shaped Western culture. Bloom further comments: "But one thing is certain: wherever the Great Books make up a central part of the curriculum, the students are excited and satisfied." His book was widely cited by some intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists . Classicist Bernard Knox made direct reference to this topic when he delivered his 1992 Jefferson Lecture (the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in
7410-633: The United States in 1872, they spent their winters in New York City and their summers in Newport, Rhode Island . While in Europe, she was educated by tutors and governesses . She rejected the standards of fashion and etiquette that were expected of young girls at the time, which were intended to allow women to marry well and to be put on display at balls and parties. She considered these fashions superficial and oppressive. Edith wanted more education than she received, so, she read from her father's library and from
7540-579: The University of California, Berkeley, has written: There is a certain irony in this [i.e., politicized objections to the canon] in that earlier student generations, my own for example, found the critical tradition that runs from Socrates through the Federalist Papers , through the writings of Mill and Marx , down to the twentieth century, to be liberating from the stuffy conventions of traditional American politics and pieties. Precisely by inculcating
7670-652: The Whartons and their friend, James Van Alen, took a cruise through the Aegean islands . Wharton was 26. The trip cost the Whartons $ 10,000 and lasted four months. She kept a travel journal, during this trip, that was thought to be lost but was later published as The Cruise of the Vanadis , now considered her earliest known travel writing. In 1897, Edith Wharton purchased Land's End in Newport, Rhode Island, from Robert Livingston Beeckman ,
7800-589: The age of 23, Wharton married Edward Robbins (Teddy) Wharton, who was 12 years her senior, at the Trinity Chapel Complex in Manhattan. From a well-established Boston family, he was a sportsman and a gentleman of the same social class and shared her love of travel. The Whartons set up house at Pencraig Cottage in Newport. In 1893, they bought a house named Land's End, on the other side of Newport, for $ 80,000, and moved into it. Wharton decorated Land's End, with
7930-491: The basis for a possible fifth archetype. Kasia Boddy wrote that, "[s]ince its initial formulation", the concept "has always been more about inspiration than achievement; the very fact that it has been attempted but remains 'unwritten' providing a spur to future engagement with both nation and national literature". Speculating on De Forest's intentions when devising the notion of the Great American Novel and commenting upon its development, Cheryl Strayed wrote that: De Forest
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#17328490197258060-686: The best in the Spanish language , he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature . García Márquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing
8190-438: The business arrangements, lined up contributors, and translated the French entries into English. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a two-page introduction, in which he praised Wharton's effort and urged Americans to support the war. She also kept up her own work, continuing to write novels, short stories, and poems, as well as reporting for The New York Times and keeping up her enormous correspondence. Wharton urged Americans to support
8320-475: The central figures of the British renaissance canon remain, Edmund Spenser , Sir Philip Sidney , Christopher Marlowe , William Shakespeare , Ben Jonson , and John Donne . Spenser , Donne , and Jonson were major influences on 17th-century poetry. However, poet John Dryden condemned aspects of the metaphysical poets in his criticism. In the 18th century Metaphysical poetry fell into further disrepute, while
8450-455: The claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture." African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity." This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with
8580-483: The consciousness of his race remained uncreated. Perrin, Andrew Hoberek and Barbara Probst Solomon all noted that the 70s saw Jews pursue the GAN. Perrin said it was a boom decade for, what Hoberek, called the "Jewish GAN". Solomon was by 1972 sick of "nice Jewish sons who are writing the GAN". Aaron Latham , in a 1971 article, highlighted Roth and Mailer as Jews who wanted to the write the next GJN and GAN, respectively. The Great American Novel's relation to masculinity
8710-424: The core of canon music and remains mostly unchanged to our days. It integrates a huge body of works starting from the 17th century and are reproduced on an ensemble of all acoustic musical instruments that were common in that century's Europe. The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to distinctly canonize the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Ludwig van Beethoven as
8840-554: The course of the 1920s, Eliot did much to establish the importance of the metaphysical school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. However, by 1961 A. Alvarez was commenting that "it may perhaps be a little late in the day to be writing about the Metaphysicals. The great vogue for Donne passed with the passing of the Anglo-American experimental movement in modern poetry." Two decades later,
8970-419: The cultural productions of historically marginalized groups. This reassessment has resulted in a whole scale expansion of what is considered "literature", and genres hitherto not regarded as "literary", such as children's writing, journals, letters, travel writing, and many others are now the subjects of scholarly interest. The Western literary canon has also expanded to include the literature of Asia, Africa,
9100-517: The curriculum at the University of Chicago . University president Robert Maynard Hutchins and his collaborator Mortimer Adler developed a program that offered reading lists, books, and organizational strategies for reading clubs to the general public. An earlier attempt had been made in 1909 by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot , with the Harvard Classics , a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature. Eliot's view
9230-445: The displaced. She was a "heroic worker on behalf of her adopted country". On April 18, 1916, Raymond Poincaré , the then-President of France, appointed her Chevalier of the Legion of Honour , the country's highest award, in recognition of her dedication to the war effort. Her relief work included setting up workrooms for unemployed French women, organizing concerts to provide work for musicians, raising tens of thousands of dollars for
9360-451: The early period of feminist literary scholarship was given over to the rediscovery and reclamation of texts written by women. Virago Press began to publish its large list of 19th and early 20th-century novels in 1975 and became one of the first commercial presses to join in the project of reclamation. In the twentieth century, the Western literary canon started to include African writers not only from African-American writers , but also from
9490-513: The editors of her letters as "one of the better known failed encounters in the American literary annals.” She spoke fluent French, Italian, and German, and many of her books were published in both French and English. In 1934, Wharton's autobiography , A Backward Glance, was published. In the view of Judith E. Funston, writing on Edith Wharton in American National Biography , What is most notable about A Backward Glance, however,
9620-902: The eighteenth century include George Berkeley , Montesquieu , Voltaire , David Hume , Giambattista Vico , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Denis Diderot , Immanuel Kant , Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham . Important nineteenth century philosophers include Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Giuseppe Mazzini , Arthur Schopenhauer , Auguste Comte , Søren Kierkegaard , Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels and Friedrich Nietzsche . Major twentieth century figures include Henri Bergson , Edmund Husserl , Bertrand Russell , Martin Heidegger , Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , and Simone Weil , Michel Foucault , Pierre Bourdieu , Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas . A porous distinction between analytic and continental approaches emerged during this period. Classical music forms
9750-612: The existence of universal truths. Yale University Professor of Humanities and famous literary critic Harold Bloom also argued strongly in favor of the canon, in his 1994 book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages , and in general the canon remains as a represented idea in many institutions. Allan Bloom (no relation), in his highly influential The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished
9880-679: The first contemporary writers of Arabic literature , along with Tawfiq el-Hakim , to explore themes of existentialism . He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films. Kenzaburō Ōe (1935–2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature . His novels, short stories, and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory , deal with political, social, and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons , nuclear power , social non-conformism , and existentialism . Ōe
10010-415: The first of many chronicles of life in old New York. At The Mount, she entertained the cream of American literary society, including her close friend, novelist Henry James , who described the estate as "a delicate French chateau mirrored in a Massachusetts pond". Although she spent many months traveling in Europe nearly every year, with her friend, Egerton Winthrop (a descendant of John Winthrop ), The Mount
10140-493: The first woman to win the award. The three fiction judges – literary critic Stuart Pratt Sherman , literature professor Robert Morss Lovett , and novelist Hamlin Garland – voted to give the prize to Sinclair Lewis for his satire Main Street , but Columbia University's advisory board, led by conservative university president Nicholas Murray Butler , overturned their decision and awarded the prize to The Age of Innocence . Wharton
10270-519: The former Dutch government of New York and New Jersey. Her father's first cousin was Caroline Schermerhorn Astor . Fort Stevens, in New York, was named for Wharton's maternal great-grandfather, Ebenezer Stevens , a Revolutionary War hero and general. Wharton was born during the Civil War . However, in describing her family life, Wharton does not mention the war, except that their travels to Europe after
10400-733: The help of designer Ogden Codman . In 1897, the Whartons purchased their New York home, 884 Park Avenue . Between 1886 and 1897, they traveled overseas, in the period from February to June, mostly visiting Italy but also Paris and England. From her marriage onwards, three interests came to dominate Wharton's life: American houses, writing, and Italy. From the late 1880s until 1902, Teddy Wharton suffered from chronic depression. The couple, then, ceased their extensive travel. At that time, his depression became more debilitating, after which they lived almost exclusively at their estate, The Mount , in Lenox, Massachusetts. During those same years, Wharton, herself,
10530-707: The interest in Elizabethan poetry was rekindled through the scholarship of Thomas Warton and others. However, the canon of Renaissance poetry was formed in the Victorian period with anthologies like Palgrave's Golden Treasury . In the twentieth century T. S. Eliot and Yvor Winters were two literary critics who were especially concerned with revising the canon of renaissance English literature. Eliot, for example, championed poet Sir John Davies in an article in The Times Literary Supplement in 1926. During
10660-406: The libraries of her father's friends. Her mother forbade her to read novels until she was married, and Edith obeyed this command. Wharton wrote and told stories from an early age. When her family moved to Europe and she was just four or five, she started what she called "making up." She invented stories for her family and walked with an open book, turning the pages as if reading while improvising
10790-410: The matter emphasise cultural diversity within the canon. The canons of music and visual arts have been broadened to encompass often overlooked periods, whilst recent media like cinema grapple with a precarious position. Criticism arises, with some viewing changes as prioritising activism over aesthetic values, often associated with critical theory, as well as postmodernism . Another critique highlights
10920-932: The morality of the author, critiques of intellectual pretension, and the "unmasking" of the truth. Wharton's writing also explored themes of "social mores and social reform" as they relate to the "extremes and anxieties of the Gilded Age". A key recurring theme in Wharton's writing is the relationship between the house as a physical space and its relationship to its inhabitant's characteristics and emotions. Maureen Howard argues "Edith Wharton conceived of houses, dwelling places, in extended imagery of shelter and dispossession. Houses – their confinement and their theatrical possibilities ... they are never mere settings." American children's stories containing slang were forbidden in Wharton's childhood home. This included such popular authors as Mark Twain , Bret Harte , and Joel Chandler Harris . She
11050-552: The most lethal acts of revenge ever taken by a writing daughter." In her memoir, A Backward Glance , Wharton describes her mother as indolent, spendthrift, censorious, disapproving, superficial, icy, dry and ironic. Wharton's writings often dealt with themes such as "social and individual fulfillment, repressed sexuality, and the manners of old families and the new elite." Maureen Howard , editor of Edith Wharton: Collected Stories , notes several recurring themes in Wharton's short stories, including confinement and attempts at freedom,
11180-494: The most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition . Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher . His writings cover many subjects – including physics , biology , zoology , metaphysics , logic , ethics , aesthetics , rhetoric , linguistics , politics and government—and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy . Aristotle's views on physical science had
11310-517: The nexus of discussion, including Moby-Dick (1851), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), The Great Gatsby (1925), and Gone with the Wind (1936). Exactly what novel or novels warrant the title is without consensus and an assortment have been contended as the idea has evolved and continued into the modern age, with fluctuations in popular and critical regard. William Carlos Williams , Clyde Brion Davis and Philip Roth have written novels about
11440-487: The novella Ethan Frome , and several notable ghost stories. Edith Newbold Jones was born on January 24, 1862, to George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander, at their brownstone at 14 West Twenty-third Street in New York City . To her friends and family, she was known as "Pussy Jones". She had two elder brothers, Frederic Rhinelander and Henry Edward. Frederic married Mary Cadwalader Rawle ; their daughter
11570-494: The overall aim of fostering a community of learning. Over 100 institutions of higher learning, mostly in the United States, offer some version of a Great Books Program as an option for students. For much of the 20th century, the Modern Library provided a larger convenient list of the Western canon. The list numbered more than 300 items by the 1950s, by authors from Aristotle to Albert Camus, and has continued to grow. When in
11700-427: The pursuit of a plateau between them. In the 21st century, retaining its contention and derision, the concept has moved towards a more populist attitude, functioning as " catnip for a listicle -obsessed internet". Adam Kirsch noted that books such as Roth's American Pastoral (1997) indicate that writers are still interested in creating the Great American Novel. Commenting upon the Great American Novel's place in
11830-429: The racial divide". Commenting upon the idea's racial aspects and presence in popular conscious, Hugh Kenner wrote in a 1953 issue of Perspective that: The lad who was going to produce 'The Great American Novel' as soon as he had gotten his mind around his adolescent experience is part of the folklore of the 'twenties, and the prevalence of this myth documents the awareness of the young American of thirty years ago that
11960-603: The reason that the idea has persisted for so long. To think that one might be writing the Great American Novel, as opposed to laboring through a meandering 400-page manuscript...is awfully reassuring. I have a purpose! I am writing the Great American Novel! Denoting an apocryphal state, film critic A. O. Scott compared the GAN to the Yeti , the Loch Ness monster and the Sasquatch . Western Canon Recent discussions upon
12090-518: The rest of her life, spending winters and springs on the French Riviera at Sainte Claire du Vieux Chateau in Hyères . Wharton was a committed supporter of French imperialism , describing herself as a "rabid imperialist,” and the war solidified her political views. After the war, she traveled to Morocco, as the guest of Resident General Hubert Lyautey and wrote the book In Morocco , full of praise for
12220-407: The rising prestige of the novel. Previously, only five percent of American books were marked as novels, with most fictional works given the self-effacing title of a "tale". In 1880, writer Henry James simplified the term with the initialism "GAN". The term soon became popular, its ubiquity considered a cliché and disparaged by literary critics. Lawerence Buell stated that the concept was seen as
12350-417: The social rituals of the New York upper classes. She keenly observed the social changes happening around her, which she later used in her writing. Wharton officially came out as a debutante to society in 1879. She was allowed to bare her shoulders and wear her hair up for the first time at a December dance, which was given by a Society matron, Anna Morton. Wharton began a courtship with Henry Leyden Stevens,
12480-453: The son of Paran Stevens, a wealthy hotelier and real estate investor from rural New Hampshire. His sister, Minnie, married Arthur Paget . The Jones family did not approve of Stevens. In the middle of her debutante season, the Jones family returned to Europe in 1881 for her father's health. In spite of this, her father, George Frederic Jones, died of a stroke in Cannes in 1882. Stevens was with
12610-457: The turn of the century to the mid-twentieth century, the idea eluded serious academic consideration, being dismissed as a "naively amateurish age-of-realism pipe dream" not aligned with the culture of that time. Writers such as William Dean Howells and Mark Twain were equally blasé. Frank Norris too saw the concept as not befitting the time, stating that the fact of a great work being American should be incidental. Edith Wharton complained that
12740-468: The very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora , African-American literature broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power." In producing their own literature, African Americans were able to establish their own literary traditions devoid of
12870-850: The war effort and encouraged America to enter the war. She wrote the popular romantic novel, Summer in 1917, the war novella, The Marne, in 1918, and A Son at the Front, in 1919 (published 1923). When the war ended, she watched the Victory Parade from the Champs Elysees' balcony of a friend's apartment. After four years of intense effort, she decided to leave Paris for the quiet of the countryside. Wharton settled 10 mi (16 km) north of Paris in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt , buying an 18th-century house on seven acres of land that she called Pavillon Colombe. She lived there, in summer and autumn, for
13000-495: The war effort, and opening tuberculosis hospitals. In 1915, Wharton edited a charity benefit volume, The Book of the Homeless , which included essays, art, poetry, and musical scores by many major contemporary European and American artists, including Henry James , Joseph Conrad , William Dean Howells , Anna de Noailles , Jean Cocteau , and Walter Gay , among others. Wharton proposed the book to her publisher, Scribner's, handled
13130-501: The war were due to the depreciation of American currency. From 1866 to 1872, the Jones family visited France , Italy , Germany , and Spain . During her travels, the young Edith became fluent in French , German , and Italian . At the age of nine, she suffered from typhoid fever , which nearly killed her, while the family was at a spa in the Black Forest . After the family returned to
13260-411: The war zone, viewing one devastated French village after another. She visited the trenches and was within earshot of artillery fire. She wrote, "We woke to a noise of guns closer and more incessant, and when we went out into the streets, it seemed as if, overnight, a new army had sprung out of the ground". Throughout the war, she worked in charitable efforts for refugees, the injured, the unemployed, and
13390-421: The works of European men. Where women's work is introduced it can be considered inappropriately rather than recognising the importance of their work; a work's greatness is judged against socially situated factors which exclude women, whilst being portrayed as an intellectual approach. The feminist movement produced both feminist fiction and non-fiction and created new interest in women's writing. It also prompted
13520-401: Was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read. Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature . He is regarded as one of
13650-402: Was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize , the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature , and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature . Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century and one of
13780-1064: Was allowed to read Louisa May Alcott but Wharton preferred Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Charles Kingsley 's The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby . Wharton's mother forbade her from reading many novels and Wharton said she "read everything else but novels until the day of my marriage." Instead Wharton read the classics, philosophy, history, and poetry in her father's library including Daniel Defoe , John Milton , Thomas Carlyle , Alphonse de Lamartine , Victor Hugo , Jean Racine , Thomas Moore , Lord Byron , William Wordsworth , John Ruskin , and Washington Irving . Biographer Hermione Lee describes Wharton as having read herself "out of Old New York" and her influences included Herbert Spencer , Charles Darwin , Friedrich Nietzsche , T. H. Huxley , George Romanes , James Frazer , and Thorstein Veblen . These influenced her ethnographic style of novelization . Wharton developed
13910-438: Was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930. Wharton was friend and confidante to many prominent intellectuals of her time: Henry James, Sinclair Lewis , Jean Cocteau , and André Gide were all her guests, at one time or another. Theodore Roosevelt, Bernard Berenson , and Kenneth Clark were valued friends, as well. Particularly notable was her meeting with F. Scott Fitzgerald , described by
14040-593: Was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gilded Age . In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Age of Innocence . She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1996. Her other well-known works are The House of Mirth ,
14170-459: Was arguing in hopes of not one Great American Novel, but rather the development of a literary canon that accurately portrayed our complex national character, has been lost on many, as generation after generation of critics have since engaged in discussions of who might have written the Great American Novel of any given age, and writers have aspired to be the one chosen — a competitive mode that is, I suppose, as American as it gets. It's also most likely
14300-448: Was at work on a revised edition of The Decoration of Houses , when she suffered a heart attack and collapsed. She died of a stroke on August 11, 1937, at Le Pavillon Colombe , her 18th-century house on Rue de Montmorency in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt . She died at 5:30 p.m., but her death was not known in Paris. At her bedside was her friend, Mrs. Royall Tyler . Wharton was buried in
14430-474: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world , where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today". Guan Moye (b. 1955), better known by the pen name "Mo Yan", is a Chinese novelist and short story writer. Donald Morrison of the U.S. news magazine TIME referred to him as "one of the most famous, oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers ", and Jim Leach called him
14560-417: Was beset with harsh literary criticism from the naturalist school of writers. In addition to novels, Wharton wrote at least 85 short stories. She was also a garden designer , an interior designer , and a taste-maker of her time. She wrote several design books, including her first major published work, The Decoration of Houses (1897), co-authored by Ogden Codman . Another of her "home and garden" books
14690-563: Was discovered, in 2017. It had a radio adaptation broadcast on BBC Radio 3, in 2018. It wouldn't be until 2023, over a century later, that the world stage premiere took place in Canada at the Shaw Festival , directed by Peter Hinton-Davis. She collaborated with Marie Tempest to write another play, but the two only completed four acts, before Marie decided she was no longer interested in costume plays. One of her earliest literary endeavors (1902)
14820-432: Was her primary residence, until 1911. When living there and while traveling abroad, Wharton was usually driven to appointments by her longtime chauffeur and friend, Charles Cook, a native of nearby South Lee, Massachusetts . When her marriage deteriorated, she decided to move, permanently, to France, living, first, at 53 Rue de Varenne, Paris , in an apartment that belonged to George Washington Vanderbilt II . Wharton
14950-563: Was landscape architect Beatrix Farrand . Edith was baptized April 20, 1862, Easter Sunday , at Grace Church . Wharton's paternal family, the Joneses, were a very wealthy and socially prominent family, having made their money in real estate. The saying " keeping up with the Joneses " is said to refer to her father's family. She was related to the Rensselaers , the most prestigious of the old patroon families, who had received land grants from
15080-460: Was not considered a proper occupation for a society woman of her time. Consequently, the poem was published under the name of a friend's father, E. A. Washburn, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson , who supported women's education. In 1877, at the age of 15, she secretly wrote a novella , Fast and Loose . In 1878, her father arranged for a collection of two dozen original poems and five translations, Verses, to be privately published. Wharton published
15210-407: Was of the belief that they had to be " anti-American ". Rogers felt that it does not need to have American protagonists or be set in United States and should not espouse patriotism or nationalism . Buell identifies multiple types of Great American Novels. First is one who is subject to mysticism and stands the test of time. The second is "the romance of the divide", which imagines national rifts in
15340-466: Was one of the few that 'doesn't stink'. Emily Temple of Literary Hub suggested that if the protagonist of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963) were male it would likely be considered more seriously as a Great American Novel contender. There are several different interpretations of what makes a Great American Novel. Some say that it depicts a diverse group facing issues representative of "epoch-defining public events or crises." John Scalzi felt that for
15470-545: Was preparing to vacation for the summer, when World War I broke out. Though many fled Paris, she moved back to her Paris apartment on the Rue de Varenne and for four years, she was a tireless and ardent supporter of the French war effort. One of the first causes she undertook, in August 1914, was the opening of a workroom for unemployed women. Here, they were fed and paid one franc a day. What began, with 30 women, soon doubled, to 60 women, and their sewing business began to thrive. When
15600-433: Was published: "Mrs. Manstey's View" had very little success, and it took her more than a year to publish another story. She completed "The Fullness of Life,” following her annual European trip with Teddy. Burlingame was critical of this story, but Wharton did not want to make edits to it. This story, along with many others, speaks about her marriage. She sent Bunner Sisters to Scribner's, in 1892. Burlingame wrote back that it
15730-534: Was rather a certain set of tentative judgments about what had importance and quality. Such judgments are always subject to revision, and in fact they were constantly being revised." One of the notable attempts at compiling an authoritative canon for literature in the English-speaking world was the Great Books of the Western World program. This program, developed in the middle third of the 20th century, grew out of
15860-423: Was rejected by Burlingame, she lost confidence in herself. She started travel writing , in 1894. In 1901, Wharton wrote a two-act play called Man of Genius . This play was about an English man who was having an affair with his secretary. The play was rehearsed but was never produced. Another 1901 play, The Shadow of a Doubt , which also came close to being staged but fell through, was thought to be lost, until it
15990-400: Was said to suffer from asthma and periods of depression. In 1908, Teddy Wharton's mental condition was determined to be incurable. In that year, Wharton began an affair with Morton Fullerton , an author, and foreign correspondent for The Times of London, in whom she found an intellectual partner. She divorced Edward Wharton, in 1913, after 28 years of marriage. Around the same time, she
16120-436: Was seen as a problem by female writers. Gertrude Stein once lamented that, as a lesbian Jewish woman, she would be unable to compose the Great American Novel. Joyce Carol Oates similarly felt that "a woman could write it, but then it wouldn't be the GAN". Viet Thanh Nguyen said that "[o]ne of the unspoken silences of the Great American Novel is the assumption that it can only be written by white men". Laura Miller wrote, in
16250-428: Was that the emphasis on narrow specialization in American colleges had harmed the quality of higher education by failing to expose students to the important products of Western civilization and thought. The essential component of such programs is a high degree of engagement with primary texts, called the Great Books. The curricula of Great Books programs often follow a canon of texts considered more or less essential to
16380-427: Was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1986, and American Toni Morrison was the first African-American woman to win, in 1993. Some early Afro-American writers were inspired to defy ubiquitous racial prejudice by proving themselves equal to European American authors. As Henry Louis Gates Jr., has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute
16510-466: Was the same as that of Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle : "The true University of these days is a Collection of Books". ("The Hero as Man of Letters", 1840) The canon of Renaissance English poetry of the 16th and early 17th century has always been in some form of flux and towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was criticised, especially by those who wished to expand it to include, for example, more women writers. However,
16640-662: Was the translation of the play Es Lebe das Leben ("The Joy of Living"), by Hermann Sudermann. The Joy of Living was criticized for its title, because the heroine swallows poison, at the end, and was a short-lived Broadway production. It was, however, a successful book. Many of Wharton's novels are characterized by subtle use of dramatic irony . Having grown up in upper-class, late-19th-century society, Wharton became one of its most astute critics, in such works as The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence . Versions of her mother, Lucretia Jones, often appeared in Wharton's fiction. Biographer Hermione Lee described it as "one of
16770-406: Was too long for Scribner's to publish. This story is believed to be based on an experience she had as a child. It did not see publication until 1916, and it is included in the collection called Xingu . After a visit with her friend, Paul Bourget , she wrote "The Good May Come" and "The Lamp of Psyche.” "The Lamp of Psyche" was a comical story, with verbal wit and sorrow. After "Something Exquisite"
16900-425: Was very critical of her work and wrote public reviews criticizing it. She also wrote about her own experiences with life. "Intense Love's Utterance" is a poem written about Henry Stevens. In 1889, she sent out three poems for publication, to Scribner's , Harper's and Century . Edward L. Burlingame published "The Last Giustiniani" for Scribner's . It was not until Wharton was 29 that her first short story
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