Bergson and American Culture

Bergsonian "vitalism" challenged the dominance of Spencerian determinism in the early twentieth century and seemed to offer a new foundation for belief in human freedom and individual possibility. Quirk traces the impact of Bergsonism upon the American sensibility and shows how individual writers -- particularly two such different artists as Willa Cather and Wallace Stevens -- appropriated vitalistic notions and made them serve the peculiar requirements of their own unique creative imaginations.