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Article: Kress, Jill M. The Figure of Consciousness: William James, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- Studies in the Novel
- Article date:
- March 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 University of North Texas. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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KRESS, JILL M. The Figure of Consciousness: William James, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. New York: Routledge, 2002. xv + 268 pp. $80.00.
The story of consciousness as it emerges in American letters begins most significantly with Ralph Waldo Emerson's struggle to awaken in us a new self. How this self was to proceed seemed relatively easy enough for him to describe--we were to enter into a new relationship with the universe based on our own energies. But where within ourselves we were to garner those forces sent him into his famous paroxysms and cadences of language, those transcendent attempts to describe what most purely we should mean when we say "I." His ...