Overview

Though both Willa Cather and E. M. Forster have been alternately praised as progressives and criticized as conservatives, the novels of both writers embody the tenets of liberal humanism, while at the same time reflecting the tensions associated with modernism (though both of these terms have come under intense critical scrutiny in recent years.) And while a few critics have offered brief comparisons of individual works or particular tendencies of Cather and Forster, none has provided the systematic comparative analysis of the relationship between liberal humanist/modernist tensions and the search for transcendence in their work that this book offers. The principal aims of the present study are to locate the imagined alternatives to the ""lamentable present"" embodied in the novels of both writers and to explore how literature and the arts might assist in transcending the deficiencies and disunities of life in the modern era.

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9781611479812

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Reviews

Built around concepts of liberal humanism and the tensions of modernism, Willa Cather and E. M. Forster: Transatlantic Transcendence traces the parallels between these novelists, one American, one English. Blackstock (Utah State Univ.) avoids the pitfalls of finding merely random similarities or of torturing texts in unearthing arbitrary influences. Instead he locates the boundary between liberal humanism and modernism (p. 7) as it developed throughout the 20th century. Complex, philosophically astute, and penetrating, the book recognizes many threads of the modernist perspective: Romanticism, transcendentalism, Platonism, religious epiphany, religious doubt, sexual awakening, gender awareness, and so much more. In explicating key works by Forster and Cather, Blackstock produces the kind of fresh, enlightening, and necessary analysis of the literature that makes one want to revisit the texts, or to read them for the first time. Blackstock might have referenced D. H. Lawrence in the title, so superbly does he discuss that writer in the context of modernism, mysticism, and liberal humanism. Then again, every topic in this study reflects the interpretive and scholarly skill of its author. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *

Built around concepts of liberal humanism and the tensions of modernism, Willa Cather and E. M. Forster: Transatlantic Transcendence traces the parallels between these novelists, one American, one English. Blackstock (Utah State Univ.) avoids the pitfalls of finding merely random similarities or of torturing texts in unearthing arbitrary influences. Instead he locates ""the boundary between liberal humanism and modernism"" (p. 7) as it developed throughout the 20th century. Complex, philosophically astute, and penetrating, the book recognizes many threads of the modernist perspective: Romanticism, transcendentalism, Platonism, religious epiphany, religious doubt, sexual awakening, gender awareness, and so much more. In explicating key works by Forster and Cather, Blackstock produces the kind of fresh, enlightening, and necessary analysis of the literature that makes one want to revisit the texts, or to read them for the first time. Blackstock might have referenced D. H. Lawrence in the title, so superbly does he discuss that writer in the context of modernism, mysticism, and liberal humanism. Then again, every topic in this study reflects the interpretive and scholarly skill of its author. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *

Author Information

Alan Blackstock is professor of English at Utah State University.

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