Bergson and American Culture

The Worlds of Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens

By Tom Quirk

318 pp., 6 x 9

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-9756-0
    Published: January 2011
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-3961-1
    Published: October 2017
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-8239-4
    Published: October 2017

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Bergsonian "vitalism" challenged the dominance of Spencerian determinism in the early twentieth century and seemed to offer a new foundation for belief in human freedom and individual possibility. Quirk traces the impact of Bergsonism upon the American sensibility and shows how individual writers -- particularly two such different artists as Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens -- appropriated vitalistic notions and made them serve the peculiar requirements of their own unique creative imaginations.

Originally published in 1990.

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Reviews

"An absorbing and frequently enlightening perspective on American culture shortly before the Great War. . . . Quirk's study adds a dimension to our thinking about Stevens and Cather that must affect the way we read them."--Wallace Stevens Journal

"Quirk takes us on an intensely satisfying journey through Bergson's thought and American vogue as they became an important source in Cather's fiction and Stevens's poetry. Amid the critically limited depreciation of literature fashionable in recent years, here is a splendid work of literary scholarship and enjoyable interpretation that is coherent, appreciative, illuminating, and extremely readable."--Kermit Vanderbilt, San Diego State University