Race, culture, nation: Edith Wharton and Ernest Renan - Critical Essay

(5.) The phrase is that of the French Catholic prelate Jacques Bossuet (1627-1704), who also described Jesus as "a man of wondrous gentleness" (un homme d'une douceur admirable) (Wardman 77).Wharton read and admired Bossuet; she presented her godson, William Tyler, with a copy of his Sermons just weeks before she died (Tyler 104).

(6.) According to Wardman, a context for Renan's essay "What Is a Nation?" is his 1879 "Letter to a German Friend" (Lettre a un ami d'Allemagne), in which he claims that Germany had not set a positive example politically or culturally (161).

(7.) As Wharton writes in "The Great American Novel":

   America has indeed dedicated herself to other ideals. What she has
   chosen--and realized--is a dead level of prosperity and security.
   Main Street abounds in the unnecessary, but lacks the one thing
   needful. Inheriting an old social organization which provided for
   nicely shaded degrees of culture and conduct, modern America has
   simplified and Taylorized it out of existence, forgetting that in
   such matters the process is necessarily one of impoverishment. (154)

(8.) On the extent to which aesthetic theories are also political, see Bentley, "Wharton, Travel, and Modernity" 161-62.

Works cited

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Arnold, Matthew. "Renan" Essays in Criticism. 3rd ser. Boston: Ball, 1910. 153-79.

Bauer, Dale M. Edith Wharton's Brave New Politics. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1994.

Benstock, Shari. No Gifts from Chance: A Biography of Edith Wharton. New York: Scribner's, 1994.

Bentley, Nancy. The Ethnography of Manners: Hawthorne, James, Wharton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.

--. "Wharton, Travel, and Modernity." A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton. Ed. Carol J. Singley. New York: Oxford UP, 2003. 147-79.

Chadbourne, Richard M. Ernest Renan. New York: Twayne, 1968.

Colquitt, Clare, Susan Goodman, and Candace Waid, eds. A Forward Glance: New Essays on Edith Wharton. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1999.

Fullerton, W. Morton. "The Art of Henry James." Quarterly Review 212 (April 1910): 393-408; Living Age 265 (11 June 1910): 643-52. Rpt. in Wegener, Uncollected Critical Writings 304-18.

Goodman, Susan. Edith Wharton's Inner Circle. Austin: U of Texas P, 1994.

Kassanoff, Jennie. "Extinction, Taxidermy, Tableaux Vivants: Staging Race and Class in The House of Mirth. PMLA 115 (Jan. 2000): 60-74.

Killoran, Helen. Edith Wharton: Art and Allusion. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1996.

Lewis, R.W.B. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper, 1975.

Pecora, Vincent P. Introduction. Pecora, Nations and Identities 1-42.

--, ed. Nations and Identities: Classic Readings. New York: Blackwell, 2001.

Ramsden, George. Edith Wharton's Library: A Catalogue. Settrington: Stone Trough, 1999.

Renan, Ernest. Essais de morale et de critique. Oeuvres completes d'Ernest Renan. Ed. Henriette Psichari. Vol. 2. Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1947.

--. "What Is a Nation?" Trans. William G. Hutchison. The Poetry of the Celtic Races and Other Studies. London: Walter Scott, 1896. Rpt. in Pecora, Nations and Identities 163-76.