Realism, Ethnicity and the Nation
Realism, Ethnicity and the Nation
This chapter presents a reconstruction of William Dean Howells's cultural thought and considers the challenges faced by his aesthetic theory, studying the potentially divisive forces of racial and linguistic differences and the tension between the aesthetically transcendent and socially committed conception of the man of letters. It also reveals a tension between two different views of literature, determining that Howells's conception of realism is the literary manifestation of ‘culture’ which he shared with Matthew Arnold.
Keywords: cultural thought, aesthetic theory, William Dean Howells, racial differences, linguistic differences, man of letters, views of literature, realism, culture
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