Article: TRANSCENDENTAL REALISM: THE THOREAUVIAN PRESENCE IN HOWELLS' A MODERN INSTANCE.(Critical Essay)

Although William Dean Howells is most frequently credited with the advent of literary realism, the intricate ninth chapter of his well-known 1882 novel, A Modern Instance,(1) suggests that the "Dean of American Letters" also nostalgically embraced the lost ideals of Thoreauvian transcendentalism. For years, Howells' critics and biographers, such as Edwin Cady and Lewis P. Simpson, have noted the backwards-glancing sections of Howells' Literary Friends and Acquaintance that link the realist to the introspective yet outward-looking transcendentalist. Yet with the exception of "The Place of Walden in The Undiscovered Country," a two-page note by Rita K. Gollin, there have ...

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