Word: edel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...given us Elizabeth Jenkins on Elizabeth I, Cecil Woodham-Smith on Queen Victoria, Philip Magnus on Gladstone and Edward VII, and Robert Blake on Benjamin Disraeli. In literature there are treasures from both sides of the Atlantic. Richard Ellmann's Joyce, George Painter's Proust and Leon Edel's James are the chief prizes, but there are many other jewels, including Michael Holroyd on Lytton Strachey, Francis Steegmuller on Cocteau and Quentin Bell on Virginia Woolf. Moreover, the past year has brought a host of distinguished and bestselling additions to the collection: William Manchester island-hopping with...
...undergraduates who thronged to his celebrated lectures on Johnson at Harvard would not have been disheartened by such a modest dis claimer. Even so, Bate's biography surpasses every expectation. It is an achievement that rivals Richard Ellmann's James Joyce and Leon Edel's five-volume Henry James in force of insight if not in literary...
...terms of technique, Edel's advice to his class would make Boswell blanch. Throw out great masses of detail, he advises, in favor of "essences and distillations." Let the biographer describe scenes in his own words, not those of the subject. Quote documents sparingly, for fear of blurring the story line. Most heretical of all, he advocates psychoanalyzing a subject-as when, in his Henry James, he constantly linked sibling rivalry between Henry and his brother William to plots and characters in James' work...
This psychological approach drew some critical fire as the five volumes on James appeared, but it fascinates his Dartmouth students. "I don't go overboard about biography, so to speak, but I think Edel's psychological method offers interesting insights," says Senior Peter Tagge. An ardent sailor, Tagge is writing for his course project a profile of round-the-world Sailor Robin Knox-Johnston. Diane Kilpatrick, a psychologist at Dartmouth's student health center, was also drawn by Edel's analytic method. When Edel proved at the first session to be "a fascinating storyteller," she juggled...
Despite his own colossal biography of James, Edel feels that the Master still has not been fully plumbed. "Even his acceptances or regrets to social events-and in later years, his telegrams-are written in the grand manner," Edel tells his class. He pauses, his hands momentarily stilled. "One could do 'The Collected Social Letters of Henry James,' " he muses. "Yes, or even The Collected Telegrams...