●Introduction
Chapter One The Age of Innocence : Affect and Aesthetic Transcendence
I. Narcissism, Excess, and Aesthetic Education
II. Loss and Newland Archer's In-Between Stasis
III. Old New York and Its Immanence
IV. Summary
Chapter Two The Mother's Recompense: Repetition and Cognitive Transcendence
I. Returning to Home and Recompensing Herself
II. Shame and Existential Dilemma
III. Repetition and Emergence of Modem Subjectivity
IV. Summary
Chapter Three Hudson River Bracketed & The Gods Arrive: Exile and Cultural Transcendence
I. Escaping the Main Street Narrowness and Going to the East
II. Anxiety and Encounter with Expansive Otherness in Europe
III. Exile and the Vision of a Great Artist
IV. Summary
Conclusion
Works Cited
Acknowledgements
伊迪絲·華頓(Edith Wharton,1862—1937)是美國19世紀末20世紀初的著名作家。她出生於美國“老紐約”文化保守的資本主義貴族“四百家”,但是她勇敢地突破階級、性別及文化習俗的偏見和制約,投身於孜孜不倦的寫作,用細膩的筆觸體現個人在社會變遷中的感知和抉擇,並在跨越文化圈層與國土界限的社會實踐中不斷超越自我。本書選取華頓後期主要作品《純真年代》《母親的補償》《哈德遜畫派》《神來了》,分析華頓“老紐約”社會中的人物在面臨傳統與現代、公共身份與個體訴求、文學傳統與個人纔能之間的激烈衝突時,情感因素如何影響小說人物在審美判斷、經驗認知、文化僭越中的思想與行為。華頓的作品不僅展現出個人奮鬥的精神軌跡,而且勾勒出美國社會現代轉型中人們的思想變化圖景,因此對任何一個身處社會變遷之中感到迷茫和焦慮的個人和群體都具有廣泛的借鋻意義。