Axel's Castle: A Study of the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930 (Paperback)

by Edmund Wilson (Author), Mary Gordon (Introduction) "IT IS MY PURPOSE in this book to try to trace the origins of certain tendencies in contemporary literature and to show their development in..." (more)
Key Phrases: Gertrude Stein, Anatole France, Miss Stein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
If great writers are hard to find, then it's safe to say great literary critics are as rare as wild white tigers who can juggle plates. Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) was one of America's most important critics, and Axel's Castle was the book that put him on the map. Few people outside graduate school read serious literary criticism, but a look into Wilson's intense thought and clear prose makes you wonder why the genre has been neglected. If you're a lover of the Modernist writers--Wilson looks specifically at Joyce, Proust, Yeats, Valery, Eliot, Stein, and Rimbaud here--then you'll enjoy Axel's Castle. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
Book of critical essays by Edmund Wilson, published in 1931. Subtitled "A Study in the Imaginative Literature of 1870-1930," the book traced the origins of specific trends in contemporary literature, which, Wilson held, was largely concerned with Symbolism and its relationship to naturalism. Wilson followed his introductory essay on Symbolism with essays that trace the development of these trends in the works of W.B. Yeats, Paul Valery, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and Arthur Rimbaud and Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (August 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374529272
• ISBN-13: 978-0374529277
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #225,468 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Introduction to Modern Literature via Symbolism, December 21, 2004

By	Sherringford Clark (Mayor's Income, Tennessee) - See all my reviews

_Axel's Castle_ provides a wonderful introduction to modern literature and its sources in the Symbolist movement. However, the book is a bit uneven, and some writers garner more attention than others; Stein gets only about ten pages. It is clear that Wilson views Joyce and Proust as the two most significant modern writers, and those two chapters are accordingly the most insightful of the book and worth the price of the entire volume. In addition, the book will introduce most readers to the deservedly obscure Villiers de L'Isle Adam and may impel them to read _Axel_. Perhaps the latter volume will someday return to print now that Wilson's first work of literary criticism has finally done so. If you are at all interested in any of these authors or the Symbolist movement, this book is essential as Wilson is one of the foremost literary critics of the century, and this is perhaps his most representative and greatest work.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Boxes, drawers, and labels, June 15, 2008

By	H. Schneider "Hermit" (window seat) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This collection of essays was published in 1931. It is available as a separate publication, and also included in Volume 1 of the LoA edition of E.Wilson, who was one of America's most important literary critics in the 30s to 50s. I knew him initially mainly due to his relationship with Nabokov, which is summarized in an entertaining letter collection: Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya.
In Axel's Castle, Wilson tells us the history of fiction and poetry since 1870 with a focus on 'schools'. In broad strokes: Romanticism had been born as a rebellion of the individual and disorder against the orderliness of Neo-classicism. With the growth of science during the 19th, the reaction against the romantic school was Naturalism, which in turn provoked Symbolism as the extrapolation of the romantic rebellion. EW claims that all relevant literature up to the time of his publication could be put in either the Symbolist drawer, or the Naturalist one, or they were syntheses of both.
That may all very well be the case, but I find it rather uninteresting. What is interesting is the individual writer, not any school that brought him/her forth.
The essays cover specifically Yeats, Valery, Eliot, Proust, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Villiers de L'Isle Adam and Rimbaud. Not to forget the road from Stein to Dada via plain nonsense.
I think that no writer who needs a label for his characterization has been really great. The most interesting essays in the collection are therefore those on Proust and Joyce. Unfortunately, EW tried to squeeze them into his bed of Procrustes, but that notwithstanding, the discussions of La Recherche and of Ulysses are making this volume worth while. They add to our understanding and are helpful if you have a basic knowledge of the two monster books already. If not, they give you a good starting point.
And then, EW tries to tell us that Proust reflects the new theories just developed by Einstein & Co. That the changing light, in which the protagonists in the Recherche appear over time, is exemplifying for us the theory of relativity. What crap.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is Literature Obsolete?, July 23, 2007

By	David Schweizer "Almawood" (Kansas, USA) - See all my reviews

The day Edmund Wilson is found irrelevant is the day literature is banned from our bookstores and libraries. This day is unlikely to come, but many small decisions are made everyday that take us closer to this eventuality. Librarians toss books routinely now to make room for play rooms, computer booths, and the lot. Public schools choose anthologies of the daily lives of workers and slaves and prisoners over the novels reviewed here by Edmund Wilson. Ask your kids if their English teacher has read any of these authors. Proust and Joyce in the public schools? No way. They are 'dead white males'. Wilson would have been appalled, but it is perhaps not surprising that things are moving in this direction. Wilson did not attend public school, and it is doubtful that if he had he would have become the foremost literary critic of his day. Then and now literature really belongs to a very small segment of society. Wilson studied Greek and Latin in private secondary school, French and Italian in college, and then taught himself Hebrew, Hungarian and Russian in middle-age. One reason he wrote well about Modernism is that he could understand it. Now that the classics are gone, Modern literature becomes harder and harder to comprehend, especially by so-called teachers with their government-issue certificates in nutrition awareness training; the day will come when our English teachers won't be able to understand anything but the memoirs of 19th century mill workers. That might be a good thing - you decide - but I hope they will have the honestly to change the names of these departments from that of English to departments of dreck.