William James and Literary Studies

Why does William James matter for literary studies? And what can the practice of literary criticism bring to our reading of James? While James is widely credited as a founding figure for the fields of psychology, philosophy, religious studies, and progressive education, his equal significance for the field of literary criticism has been comparatively neglected. By modelling a variety of literary critical approaches to reading James and investigating James’s equally various approaches to literature, this book demonstrates how his work historically informs and prospectively transforms the way we think about the bedrock premises of literary study – namely, style, influence, and method. The volume’s diverse contributions unfold and elaborate these three facets of James’s literary critical paradigm as they manifest in the rousing character of his sentences, in the impactful disseminations of his formative relationships, and in his uniquely programmatic responsiveness to the urgent issues of his time.

Author Biography

Kate Stanley is Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario. She is the author of Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson (2018). Kristen Case is the author of two scholarly books, American Poetry and Poetic Practice (2017) and Keeping Time: Henry David Thoreau’s Kalendar, as well as three books of poetry. She is Executive Director of the Monson Seminar, a program for first-generation and Pell-eligible college students.