Henry James and the Language of Experience
Title | Henry James and the Language of Experience PDF eBook |
Author | Collin Meissner |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 251 |
Release | 1999-06-28 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1139425714 |
In Henry James and the Language of Experience, Collin Meissner examines the political dimension to the representation of experience as it unfolds throughout James's work. Meissner argues that, for James, experience was a private and public event, a dialectical process that registered and expressed his consciousness of the external world. Adapting recent work in hermeneutics and phenomenology, Meissner shows how James's understanding of the process of consciousness is not simply an aspect of literary form; it is in fact inherently political, as it requires an active engagement with the full complexity of social reality. For James, the civic value of art resided in this interactive process, one in which the reader becomes aware of the aesthetic experience as immediate and engaged. This wide-ranging study combines literary theory and close readings of James's work to argue for a redefinition of the aesthetic as it operates in James's work.
Henry James and the Language of Experience
Title | Henry James and the Language of Experience PDF eBook |
Author | Collin Meissner |
Publisher | |
Pages | 249 |
Release | 1999 |
Genre | Aesthetics |
ISBN | 9781107115101 |
In Henry James and the Language of Experience, Collin Meissner examines the political dimension to the representation of experience as it unfolds throughout James's work. Meissner argues that, for James, experience was a private and public event, a dialectical process that registered and expressed his consciousness of the external world. Adapting recent work in hermeneutics and phenomenology, Meissner shows how James's understanding of the process of consciousness is not simply an aspect of literary form; it is in fact inherently political, as it requires an active engagement with the full co.
Henry James in Context
Title | Henry James in Context PDF eBook |
Author | David McWhirter |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 528 |
Release | 2010-09-16 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0521514614 |
The fullest single volume work of reference on James's life and his interactions with the world around him.
Telling in Henry James
Title | Telling in Henry James PDF eBook |
Author | Lynda Zwinger |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing USA |
Pages | 151 |
Release | 2017-03-23 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1501330675 |
Telling in Henry James argues that James's contribution to narrative and narrative theories is a lifelong exploration of how to "tell," but not, as Douglas has it in "The Turn of the Screw" in any "literal, vulgar way." James's fiction offers multiple, and often contradictory, reading (in)directions. Zwinger's overarching contention is that the telling detail is that which cannot be accounted for with any single critical or theoretical lens-that reading James is in some real sense a reading of the disquietingly inassimilable "fictional machinery." The analyses offered by each of the six chapters are grounded in close reading and focused on oddments-textual equivalents to the ?particles? James describes as caught in a silken spider web, in a famous analogy used in ?The Art of Fiction? to describe the kind of ?consciousness? James wants his fiction to present to the reader. Telling in Henry James attends to the sheer fun of James's wit and verbal dexterity, to the cognitive tune-up offered by the complexities and nuances of his precise and rhythmic syntax, and to the complex and contradictory contrapuntal impact of the language on the page, tongue, and ear.
The Romance of Certain Old Clothes
Title | The Romance of Certain Old Clothes PDF eBook |
Author | Henry James |
Publisher | Lindhardt og Ringhof |
Pages | 8 |
Release | 2021-03-01 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN | 8726587289 |
What can destroy sisterly love faster than a love triangle? "The Romance of Certain Old Clothes" tells the story of two sisters: Viola and Perdita, described as equally beautiful. Both women fall in love with Mr. Arthur Lloyd, who then must choose between them. The sisters vow not to be angry at his choice but after Lloyd chooses Perdita, Viola falls into jealousy and depression. Discover what is she ready to do to win the man of her heart in this story of dramatic rivalry. Henry James (1843 – 1916) is regarded one of the greatest novelists in the English language. Born in the United States, but mainly living and working in Europe, he was largely occupied with the clash of personalities and cultures between the Old World and the New World. He explored this topic in his famous novels 'The Portrait of a Lady' and 'The Wings of the Dove'. James was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Reading Henry James in the Twenty-First Century
Title | Reading Henry James in the Twenty-First Century PDF eBook |
Author | Dennis Tredy |
Publisher | Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Pages | 430 |
Release | 2019-06-04 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1527535452 |
To commemorate the recent centennial of Henry James’s death and to help readers understand the depth and scope of the author’s influence both today and during the previous century, thirty leading Jamesian scholars from twelve different countries and five continents were asked to explore ways in which the notions of ‘heritage’ and ‘transmission’ currently come into play when reading James. The resulting chapters of this volume are divided into three main sections, each focusing on different ways in which James’s legacy is being re-evaluated today—from his influence on key authors, playwrights and film-makers over the past century (Part One), to new discoveries regarding European authors and artists who influenced James (Part Two), to recent approaches more radically re-evaluating James for the twenty-first century, including contemporary poetics, political and sociological dimensions, cognitive science, and queer studies (Part Three). This collection will be of great interest to scholars and general readers of James, and is a useful guide to tracing the writer’s ever-elusive ‘figure in the carpet’ and understanding the power of his continued impact today.
Meaning in Henry James
Title | Meaning in Henry James PDF eBook |
Author | Millicent Bell |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Pages | 412 |
Release | 1991 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780674557628 |
Henry James rebelled intuitively against the tyranny and banality of plots. Believing a life to have many potential paths and a self to hold many destinies, he hung the evocative shadow of "what might have been" over much of what he wrote. Yet James also realized that no life can be lived--and no story written--except by submission to some outcome. The limiting conventions of society and literature are, he found, almost inescapable. In a major, comprehensive new study of James's work, Millicent Bell explores this oscillation between hope and fatalism, indeterminacy and form, and uncertainty and meaning. In the process Bell provides fresh insight into how we read and interpret fiction. Bell demonstrates how James's texts steadfastly, almost perversely at times, preserve a sense of alternative possibilities. James involves his characters in overlapping scenarios drawn from folklore, drama, literature, or naturalist formula. The reader engages, with the hero or heroine, in imagining many plots other than the one that finally-and often ambiguously--emerges. The story arouses expectations, proposes courses, then cancels them successively. In complicity with author and character, the reader crafts the story in an adventure of constant revision and anticipation. Literary meaning becomes an experience as well as a goal. In the end, revelations and resolutions, even if unclear or partial, assume an altered significance in light of the earlier imaginings. Not surprisingly, James's deepest sympathies lay with those characters who resisted entrapment by cultural expectations--his idealistic free spirits like Isabel, his marriage renouncers like Fleda Vetch, his largely silent and detached witnesses to life like Strether and the generous Maisie. They are frequently the victims of callous manipulators who box them into oppressive roles or who literally "plot against" them. By looking closely at James's critiques of clever" categorical mind and at his loving and complex portraits of characters of unfulfilled potentiality, Bell celebrates the paradoxes of James's story-denying fiction. In extended analyses of Daisy Miller," Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady; The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, "The Aspern Papers," The Spoils of Poynton, "The Turn of the Screw," What Maisie Knew, "The Beast in the Jungle," "The Jolly Corner," The Wings of the Dove, and The Ambassadors, Bell relates James's work to influential movements of the day, notably impressionism and naturalism. She examines the influence of Hawthorne, Emerson, Flaubert, Balzac, and Zola on James at various periods throughout his career. Drawing on rich traditions of criticism and on stimulating recent theories, Bell forges a critical approach both accessible and profound for this elegant reading of one of the greatest writers of this or any time. It is a book that will be of high value and interest to the advanced scholar--marking out new ground in its methodology and offering innovative interpretations of James's fiction. At the same time, it will appeal equally to the general, reader, who will find his reading of James enriched by Bell's lucid and impassioned discussion.