Willa Cather and aestheticism : from Romanticism to Modernism / edited by Sarah Cheney Watson and Ann Moseley.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : The "intrinsic beauty" of art / Ann Moseley and Sarah Cheney Watson. Part I : The aesthetic movement Exit smiling : the case for Paul's dandyism / Timothy W. Bintrim -- Innocence and experience, good and evil, and doppelgangers : decadent aesthetics in Cather's "Consequences," James's "The jolly corner," and Wilde's The picture of Dorian Gray / Sonja Froiland Lynch and Robert Lee Lynch -- Willa Cather's time machine : Alexander's bridge, H.G. Wells, and aesthetic temporality / Peter Betjemann -- Aestheticism and the dispossessed : Cather's dual Europe in America / Nicholas Birns -- Willa Cather's disenchanted epicurean : Godfrey St. Peter in The professor's house / Sarah Cheney Watson -- Part II : The visual arts The arts and crafts on Willa Cather's frontier / Leona Sevick -- Cather's "Twilight stage" : aestheticism, tonalism, and modernist sentiment / Joseph C. Murphy -- Willa Cather, the Nabi of Red Cloud / Mark Facknitz -- Blessed damsels, lost ladies, and Cather's real women / Angela Conrad -- Fernand Léger and Willa Cather's "Coming, Aphrodite!" / Jacqueline H. Harris -- Part III : Movement toward modernism "The nude had descended the staircase" : Katherine Anne Porter looks at Willa Cather looking at modern art / Janis P. Stout -- With the "hand, fastidious and bold" : bridging Walter Pater's aestheticism and Willa Cather's modernism / Olga Aksakalova -- From British aestheticism to American modernism : Cather's transforming vision / Jo Ann Middleton -- Part IV : Art and religion Willa Cather's sheltering art : Cather's cathedral and the Adams factor / John J. Murphy.