Edward Wagenknecht
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Edward (Charles) Wagenknecht (March 28, 1900—May 24, 2004) was an American literary critic and teacher, who specialized in 19th century American literature. He wrote and edited a large number of books on literature and movies, and taught for many years at various universities, including the University of Chicago and Boston University.
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[edit] Life
Born in Chicago Wagenknecht was attracted from an early age to various art forms: theater, opera, movies, even the Oz novels of L. Frank Baum. He was particularly interested in the writings of critic Gamaliel Bradford, who immersed himself in the life and works of an author and then wrote what he called a "psychography" about the writer.
Wagenknecht received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1932. His doctoral dissertation was a Bradford-like psychograph, Charles Dickens: A Victorian Portrait. Also in 1932 Wagenknecht married Dorothy Arnold, and the couple had three sons.
Wagenknecht spent a long career teaching at a number of schools: University of Chicago (1923-25), University of Washington (1925-1943), Illinois Institute of Technology (1943-1947), Boston University (1947-1965), and the extension division of Harvard University (1965-1972). His style of teaching was rigorous and traditional, and he challenged his students with tough examinations.
Throughout his teaching career and beyond, Wagenknecht wrote on his great loves of literature and film. Perhaps his best known books are Calvacade of the English Novel (1943, second edition 1954) and Calvacade of the American Novel (1952). To give an idea of his range, he wrote or edited books on Henry James, Marilyn Monroe, Lilian Gish, John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jenny Lind and Theodore Roosevelt. His first publication appeared in 1927; his last in 1994. He even wrote novels (under a pseudonym) about Joan of Arc and Mary, Queen of Scots. The list of his books includes more than sixty titles.
After his retirement from teaching Wagenknecht stayed active as a writer into his nineties. A review of one of his books described him as a Jamesian hero, which is appropriate because he wrote three books on Henry James and personified the intelligence, perception and decency that James prized.
[edit] Criticism
Wagenknecht practiced a form of criticism pioneered by French critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve and taken up by Gamaliel Bradford. He would explore the full range of a writer's works, then form an overall picture of the writer's point of view and technique. He was particularly interested in characterization, style, and moral issues. He favored the Jamesian well-made novel but was open to other types of writing, such as stream-of-consciousness works.
He also produced an enormous amount of film criticism, much of it before the movies became a fashionable subject of academic attention. He enjoyed writing about women artists in both literature and film, although it would be hard to call his viewpoint a feminist one. He was more courtly in his approach to the women he wrote about.
Above all, Wagenknecht was a completely professional writer who always had an eye on publication. In his memoir As Far as Yesterday (1968) he wrote:
- Though I have always written to please myself first of all, I have never been bashful about wooing the printing press, and I began sending my things out very early. For a long time, of course, they all came back, but in the long run nothing that was publishable failed of publication, though, except for book reviews, I have always been more successful with book publishers than with magazine editors. Here, again, I am sure my irrefragable independence has been the root cause. Magazine editors have 'policies' and 'interests.' So have I, and I have never considered dropping mine to take up those of somebody else.
[edit] Selected works
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[edit] References
- Contemporary Authors - Biography - Edward Charles Wagenknecht by Gale Reference Team, Thomson Gale 2006
- Dictionary of Literary Biography - Volume 103: American Literary Biographers, Edward Wagenknecht entry by Herbert F. Smith, Thomson Gale 1991 ISBN 0-8103-4583-8
