Introduction Chapter One The Age of Innocence : Affect and Aesthetic Transcendence I. Narcissism, Excess, and Aesthetic Education II. Loss and Newland Archer's In-Between Stasis III. Old New York and Its Immanence IV. Summary Chapter Two The Mother's Recompense: Repetition and Cognitive Transcendence I. Returning to Home and Recompensing Herself II. Shame and Existential Dilemma III. Repetition and Emergence of Modem Subjectivity IV. Summary Chapter Three Hudson River Bracketed & The Gods Arrive: Exile and Cultural Transcendence I. Escaping the Main Street Narrowness and Going to the East II. Anxiety and Encounter with Expansive Otherness in Europe III. Exile and the Vision of a Great Artist IV. Summary Conclusion Works Cited Acknowledgements