Wound And The Bow: Seven Studies In Literature

The Wound and the Bow collects seven wonderful essays on the delicate theme of the relation between art and suffering by the legendary literary and social critic, Edmund Wilson(1895-1972). This welcome re-issue -- one of several -- testifies to the value publishers put on it and to a reluctance among them ever to let it stay out of print for very long. The subjects treated -- Dickens and Kipling, Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway, Joyce and Sophocles, and, perhaps most surprising, Jacques Casanova -- reveal the range and dexterity of Edmund Wilson's interests, his historical grasp, his learning, and his intellectual curiosity. The Wound and the Bow did not give rise to a new body of literary theory nor a new school of literary criticism. Wilson's contributions were, rather, the animating and reanimating of the reputations of the artists he treats here and the often successful search for the sources of their literary artistry and craftsmanship. This reissue provides a forceful reminder that another of Wilson's critical functions was his role, as his friend E Scott Fitzgerald put it, as the "literary conscience of my generation". The essays on Kipling and Hemingway, especially, suggest that one of the permanent contributions of this book is its forthright statements about the credo of intellectual honesty that must underlie any successful artistic work. His chastisements of these writers when he sees them allowing ego or politics to distort their rendering of people and society are clearer statements of artistic values than we have seen in a while. Wilson's role as a moral barometer, as manifest in this book, is one which he continues to fulfill. "In the best tradition ofliterary criticism... combines exact information with shrewd and searching penetration into the personal life of the artist". -- The New York Times