Cheryl Foster examines Schopenhauer’s theory of genius, which she situates within a politics of knowledge. Many of our dominant social institutions devalue the arts which are overlooked as potential sources of knowledge. Foster argues that Schopenhauer (despite his own strong resources of bigotry) is in a position to address this injustice by making an argument for the distinction between talent and genius, or conceptual and intuitive understanding, and making a strong argument for the significance and distinctiveness of aesthetic, intuitive cognition. Foster looks carefully at Schopenhauer’s description of the experience of artistic inspiration, the receptivity distinctive of genius that enables artists to create aesthetically significant works. She finds that Schopenhauer has unexpected confirmation in the account Edith Wharton gave of her own artistic process. To realize the potential of Schopenhauer’s analysis, we need to free him from some of his reactionary investments, such as his anti-Semitism, misogyny, elitism, and mystifications. Foster carefully reconstructs a theory of genius and intuitive cognition that is both free from these elements and consistent with the phenomenology of artistic experience as reported by practicing artists. The result is a useful and accurate account of a vital source of nonconceptual knowledge.

During the First World War some of the most prominent Americans who aided France through their writing and charity work were expatriate women, many finding creative freedom and economic opportunities there that they lacked in the United States. Mildred Aldrich, Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Atherton, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher advocated on behalf of France, believing that fuller American support for France might help relieve the human suffering they saw before them and, more idealistically, preserve the civilization they found represented in France. These women wrote journalism, propaganda, academic studies, and sentimental prose, none of which are easily disentangled from each other as all are meant to convince, educate, or persuade readers to a particular point of view. They take as their subjects the wide variety of human issues that circulated around war, its impact on civilian life, the effects of invasion and occupation, injury and loss of life, and larger questions about inherited values and human responsibility in the face of suffering.

Edith Wharton’s archive consists of material held by over thirty institutions across North America and Europe. This essay demonstrates that the process of integrating the contents of Wharton’s archive into the study of her writing has been hindered not only by its immensity, generic diversity, and geographic distribution, but by its history. Sections of the essay address the uses of Wharton’s archive by her biographers; the significance of recently published archival documents which alter substantially our understanding of Wharton’s early career and work as a dramatist; material related to Wharton’s wartime experiences, a subject of renewed interest; and Wharton’s professional correspondence, especially her negotiations with her editors and publishers, which impacted the formal properties of Wharton’s fiction. The essay argues that Wharton’s archive remains a source of new information about the scope and variety of her achievements, and her creative processes.

Gay’s praise reminds us, if we need it, of both Wharton’s prominence as a writer and her contemporary relevance. At the same time, Gay’s admiration for a woman “unafraid to offer opinions” speaks to ongoing divided reactions to such women, applauded in some quarters, damned in others, for the very acts of thinking and speaking for themselves. Gay defines Wharton’s stature and contributions expansively: The Writing of Fiction “showed how the work of the fiction writer is not only to create fiction but also to consume fiction and be able to hold forth on matters of craft.” For Wharton, writing was, however noble, however much a calling to “the Land of Letters” (BG 119), ultimately just that: a “craft” – a conviction underscored in The Writing of Fiction by its validation of, and interdisciplinary links to, a variety of practical but creative art forms, among them acting, music, and design.