Figures in American Literary Pragmatism
Henry James and the Metaphysical Club
Description:... This dissertation explores the literary and philosophical intersections between Henry James's works of fiction and the writings of William James, Charles Peirce, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The latter three were primary figures in the development of Pragmatism, a philosophical movement which emphasizes that the value of a belief or idea emerges through action and tangible, social consequences. Applying a Pragmatist approach to Henry James's fiction provides a basis for clarifying new readings of his narratives, but, at the same time, applying a literary approach to Pragmatism leads to new understandings of the philosophy. The main purpose of this project, then, is to articulate and examine the workings of a literary Pragmatism by tracing interrelated uses of metaphors and figurative language in the works of Peirce, Holmes, and William and Henry James. On the one hand, these literary components establish links between the fictional and philosophical writings by functioning as key rhetorical vehicles in interrelated constructions of subjectivity. On the other hand, this figurative language also connects the works of these four writers to their shared cultural environment by incorporating references to large-scale developments and transformations in late-nineteenth-century America - specifically, the Civil War, the expansion of a corporate capitalist economy, the growth of the railroad, and the ongoing resonances of the American Revolution. In this way, the Pragmatist approach to age-old philosophical issues is inflected by literary incorporations of major dynamics and tendencies central to the workings of late-nineteenth-century American culture, providing a uniquely American perspective on the relationship between individual subjectivity and the external environment. Henry James's fiction serves as the laboratory where the ramifications of Pragmatist representations of subjectivity play out through the relationships his characters negotiate between their private beliefs and ideas and the evaluations of these beliefs and ideas in their social spheres. Among other things, James's literary works reveal that the processes through which "Truth happens to an idea" are complex, multilayered, and often unexpected.
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