Ethics of Intensity in American Fiction

Anthony Channell Hilfer (1936-2008) was professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

• Acknowledgments Preface Introduction 1. Ethos vs. Pathos 2. Pragmatic Philosophers and Realistic Novelists 1. The Ethical Imperative: “Self, Self, Self” in Victorian Fiction 1. “Self” 2. Religious Humanism 3. Renunciation 4. The Psychology of “Self” 5. The Analysis of “Self”: Romola6. The Reaction from Analysis: The Cat on the Vivisection Table 2. Whitman’s Body: Kinesthetic Imagery and Sexual Pathos in “Song of Myself” 1. Dissociations 2. Reconstitutions 3. A Modern Instance: Pathos Subordinated to Ethos 1. Whitman and Pathos, Eliot and Ethos 2. Physical Signs as Ethical Signs 3. Community Ethos: Ideal Motivations 4. Tropisms: Real Motivations 5. Bartley’s Reveries: The Ethical Structuring of Consciousness 6. Conscience as Inner Debate 7. Negative Essence and False Consciousness 8. Marital Realpolitik and the Stages of Degeneration 9. Chance, Timing, Rhythm 10. Punitive Tragedy 4. Henry James: An Ethics of Intensity I. “The Beast in the Jungle” 1. “A Great Negative Adventure”: Irony and Sympathy 2. Marcher as Solipsist: The Ethics of Intensity II. The Wings of the Dove1. Self and Other 2. Social Construction: Pseudo-Selves 3. Social Construction: The “Original Fun of Mistakes” 4. Performance 5. The Biological Imperative 6. The Construction of a Personage 7. The Larger Self 5. Dreiser: Pathos as Ethos 1. Dreiser’s Barbaric Naturalism: The Ethical Attack 2. Pathos as Ethos 3. Dreiser’s Platonism: “When I Read Spencer I Could Only Sigh” 4. Carrie’s Face: The Natural Expression of Longing 5. Dreiser and Howells: Two Modes of Realism 6. An American Tragedy: Sympathy and Discomfort 6. Stein’s “Melanctha”: An Education in Pathos 1. Stein as Radical Empiricist 2. Understanding Wandering 3. Real Experience: “The Squeeze of This World’s Life” 4. Melanctha and Jeff: Pathos vs. Ethos Conclusion Notes Index

"... a coherent, substantial, and original book ... of great interest to all students of later nineteenth and early twentieth century literature in both England and America." - Joel Porte