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Criticism, Literary History, and the Paradigm: The Education of Henry Adams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Wayne Lesser
Wayne Lesser*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
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Abstract

Literary historians have persistently regarded The Education of Henry Adams as a “paradigmatic” text. While “historical explanations“ stress the book's historical achievement, “critical explications” portray it as a failure of historical consciousness that achieves its success in the ahistorical arenas of aesthetic integration and imaginative projection. To relate the products of “explication” with the aims of “historical explanation,” I regard the work's true “paradigm achievement” as an inquiry into “historical being.” For Adams this achievement embodies disciplinary formulation and professional commitment and thus coordinates historical speculation and self-cultivation. One must assess the ethical density and cultural significance of the text before explaining its historical identity. The Education, despite its origin in epistemological chaos, makes the past eternally relevant to the present; for it is a personal and theoretical discovery of how the narrative structures of history and selfhood create the possibilities of individual and social life.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 97 , Issue 3 , May 1982 , pp. 378 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1982

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References

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