Author: Thomas J. Otten
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814210260
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Do the surfaces matter? In this provocative book, A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World, Thomas J. Otten demonstrates that surfaces matter profoundly. Taking seriously the accessories of Henry James's fiction-the china and bric-a-brac, the antique cabinets and tapestries, the ribbons and hats-this book argues that James's famous ambiguity is a material state, an indeterminate zone where the difference between essence and ornament disappears. Ranging between fictions as well-known as The Portrait of a Lady (whose heroine is celebrated for her psychological complexity) and ones as understudied as "Rose-Agathe" (whose heroine is a hairdresser's manikin), Otten suggests that the distinction between what counts as thematic depth and what counts as physical surface is, for James, impossible to maintain. Achieving a superficial reading of Henry James means demonstrating the persistence of the material within the novelist's most conceptual formations of meaning-an argument with important consequences for literary theory, as Otten shows in his concluding chapters. Eloquently written and guided by a perverse love for the superfluous detail, this book makes an important contribution to a fast-growing area of the humanities, one newly committed to the serious study of material culture, the concrete experiences of everyday life, and the history of the physical senses. Book jacket.
A Superficial Reading of Henry James
Author: Thomas J. Otten
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814210260
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Do the surfaces matter? In this provocative book, A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World, Thomas J. Otten demonstrates that surfaces matter profoundly. Taking seriously the accessories of Henry James's fiction-the china and bric-a-brac, the antique cabinets and tapestries, the ribbons and hats-this book argues that James's famous ambiguity is a material state, an indeterminate zone where the difference between essence and ornament disappears. Ranging between fictions as well-known as The Portrait of a Lady (whose heroine is celebrated for her psychological complexity) and ones as understudied as "Rose-Agathe" (whose heroine is a hairdresser's manikin), Otten suggests that the distinction between what counts as thematic depth and what counts as physical surface is, for James, impossible to maintain. Achieving a superficial reading of Henry James means demonstrating the persistence of the material within the novelist's most conceptual formations of meaning-an argument with important consequences for literary theory, as Otten shows in his concluding chapters. Eloquently written and guided by a perverse love for the superfluous detail, this book makes an important contribution to a fast-growing area of the humanities, one newly committed to the serious study of material culture, the concrete experiences of everyday life, and the history of the physical senses. Book jacket.
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 0814210260
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Book Description
Do the surfaces matter? In this provocative book, A Superficial Reading of Henry James: Preoccupations with the Material World, Thomas J. Otten demonstrates that surfaces matter profoundly. Taking seriously the accessories of Henry James's fiction-the china and bric-a-brac, the antique cabinets and tapestries, the ribbons and hats-this book argues that James's famous ambiguity is a material state, an indeterminate zone where the difference between essence and ornament disappears. Ranging between fictions as well-known as The Portrait of a Lady (whose heroine is celebrated for her psychological complexity) and ones as understudied as "Rose-Agathe" (whose heroine is a hairdresser's manikin), Otten suggests that the distinction between what counts as thematic depth and what counts as physical surface is, for James, impossible to maintain. Achieving a superficial reading of Henry James means demonstrating the persistence of the material within the novelist's most conceptual formations of meaning-an argument with important consequences for literary theory, as Otten shows in his concluding chapters. Eloquently written and guided by a perverse love for the superfluous detail, this book makes an important contribution to a fast-growing area of the humanities, one newly committed to the serious study of material culture, the concrete experiences of everyday life, and the history of the physical senses. Book jacket.
Henry James in Context
Author: David McWhirter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521514614
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 528
Book Description
The fullest single volume work of reference on James's life and his interactions with the world around him.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521514614
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 528
Book Description
The fullest single volume work of reference on James's life and his interactions with the world around him.
Rose-Agathe (1878)
Author: Henry James
Publisher: Greenbie Press
ISBN: 9781447469773
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1878 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story, 'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated to London, where he remained for the vast majority of the rest of his life, becoming a British citizen in 1915. From this point on, he was a hugely prolific author, eventually producing twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories and novellas, as well as literary criticism, plays and travelogues. Amongst James's most famous works are The Europeans (1878), Daisy Miller (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Bostonians (1886), and one of the most famous ghost stories of all time, The Turn of the Screw (1898). We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Publisher: Greenbie Press
ISBN: 9781447469773
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34
Book Description
This early work by Henry James was originally published in 1878 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. Henry James was born in New York City in 1843. One of thirteen children, James had an unorthodox early education, switching between schools, private tutors and private reading.. James published his first story, 'A Tragedy of Error', in the Continental Monthly in 1864, when he was twenty years old. In 1876, he emigrated to London, where he remained for the vast majority of the rest of his life, becoming a British citizen in 1915. From this point on, he was a hugely prolific author, eventually producing twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories and novellas, as well as literary criticism, plays and travelogues. Amongst James's most famous works are The Europeans (1878), Daisy Miller (1878), Washington Square (1880), The Bostonians (1886), and one of the most famous ghost stories of all time, The Turn of the Screw (1898). We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
The Daily Henry James
Author: Henry James
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640854X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Originally published as: The Henry James Yearbook. Boston: Gorham Press, 1911, selected and arranged by Evelyn Garnaut Smalley, with an introduction by Henry James and William Dean Howells.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022640854X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
Originally published as: The Henry James Yearbook. Boston: Gorham Press, 1911, selected and arranged by Evelyn Garnaut Smalley, with an introduction by Henry James and William Dean Howells.
Foreign Bodies
Author: Cynthia Ozick
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547504551
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Book Description
In her sixth novel, Cynthia Ozick retells the story of Henry James’s The Ambassadors as a photographic negative, retaining the plot but reversing the meaning. Foreign Bodies transforms Henry James’s prototype into a brilliant, utterly original, new American classic. At the core of the story is Bea Nightingale, a fiftyish divorced schoolteacher whose life has been on hold during the many years since her brief marriage. When her estranged, difficult brother asks her to leave New York for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of her brother’s family and even, after so long, her ex-husband. Every one of them is irrevocably changed by the events of just a few months in that fateful year. Traveling from New York to Paris to Hollywood, aiding and abetting her nephew and niece while waging a war of letters with her brother, facing her ex-husband and finally shaking off his lingering sneers from decades past, Bea Nightingale is a newly liberated divorcee who inadvertently wreaks havoc on the very people she tries to help.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547504551
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 261
Book Description
In her sixth novel, Cynthia Ozick retells the story of Henry James’s The Ambassadors as a photographic negative, retaining the plot but reversing the meaning. Foreign Bodies transforms Henry James’s prototype into a brilliant, utterly original, new American classic. At the core of the story is Bea Nightingale, a fiftyish divorced schoolteacher whose life has been on hold during the many years since her brief marriage. When her estranged, difficult brother asks her to leave New York for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of her brother’s family and even, after so long, her ex-husband. Every one of them is irrevocably changed by the events of just a few months in that fateful year. Traveling from New York to Paris to Hollywood, aiding and abetting her nephew and niece while waging a war of letters with her brother, facing her ex-husband and finally shaking off his lingering sneers from decades past, Bea Nightingale is a newly liberated divorcee who inadvertently wreaks havoc on the very people she tries to help.
Performing the Everyday in Henry James's Late Novels
Author: Maya Higashi Wakana
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317082214
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
Focusing on James's last three completed novels - The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl - Maya Higashi Wakana shows how a microsociological approach to James's novels radically revises the widespread tradition of putting James's characters into historical and cultural contexts. Wakana begins with the premise that day-to-day living is inherently theatrical and thus duplicitous, and goes on to show that James's art relies significantly on his powerful sense of the agonizing and even dangerous complications of mundane face-to-face rituals that pervade his work. Centrally informed by social thinkers such as G. H. Mead and Erving Goffman, Wakana's study discloses the richness, complexity, and singularity of the interpersonal connections depicted in James's late novels. Persuasively argued, and rich in original close readings, her book makes an important contribution to James's studies and to theories of social interaction.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317082214
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 204
Book Description
Focusing on James's last three completed novels - The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl - Maya Higashi Wakana shows how a microsociological approach to James's novels radically revises the widespread tradition of putting James's characters into historical and cultural contexts. Wakana begins with the premise that day-to-day living is inherently theatrical and thus duplicitous, and goes on to show that James's art relies significantly on his powerful sense of the agonizing and even dangerous complications of mundane face-to-face rituals that pervade his work. Centrally informed by social thinkers such as G. H. Mead and Erving Goffman, Wakana's study discloses the richness, complexity, and singularity of the interpersonal connections depicted in James's late novels. Persuasively argued, and rich in original close readings, her book makes an important contribution to James's studies and to theories of social interaction.
Henry James and the Art of Impressions
Author: John Scholar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192594931
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
Henry James criticized the impressionism that was revolutionizing French painting and fiction. He satirized the British aesthetic movement whose keystone was impressionist criticism. So why, time and again in important parts of his literary work, did James use the word 'impression'? Henry James and the Art of Impressions argues that James tried to wrest the impression from the impressionists and to recast it in his own art of the novel. Interdisciplinary in its range, philosophical and literary in its focus, the book shows the place of James's work within the wider cultural history of impressionism. It draws on painting, philosophy, psychology, literature, and critical theory to examine James's art criticism, early literary criticism, travel writing, reflections on his own fiction, and the three great novels of his major phase, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. It shows how the language of impressions enables James to represent the most intense moments of consciousness of his characters. It argues that the Jamesian impression is best understood as a family of related ideas bound together by James's attempt to reconcile the novel's value as a mimetic form with its value as a transformative creative activity.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192594931
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
Henry James criticized the impressionism that was revolutionizing French painting and fiction. He satirized the British aesthetic movement whose keystone was impressionist criticism. So why, time and again in important parts of his literary work, did James use the word 'impression'? Henry James and the Art of Impressions argues that James tried to wrest the impression from the impressionists and to recast it in his own art of the novel. Interdisciplinary in its range, philosophical and literary in its focus, the book shows the place of James's work within the wider cultural history of impressionism. It draws on painting, philosophy, psychology, literature, and critical theory to examine James's art criticism, early literary criticism, travel writing, reflections on his own fiction, and the three great novels of his major phase, The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. It shows how the language of impressions enables James to represent the most intense moments of consciousness of his characters. It argues that the Jamesian impression is best understood as a family of related ideas bound together by James's attempt to reconcile the novel's value as a mimetic form with its value as a transformative creative activity.
The Author of Beltraffio
Author: Henry James
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1776534093
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 61
Book Description
Often regarded as one of the most important literary figures of his era, American-born author Henry James possessed a unique knack for describing the idiosyncrasies of dysfunctional families. The Ambient family at the center of the novella The Author of Beltraffio ranks among his most compelling creations. The patriarch Mark Ambient is an acclaimed novelist whose wife strongly disapproves of his work. Will this discordance bring the family to its knees?
Publisher: The Floating Press
ISBN: 1776534093
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 61
Book Description
Often regarded as one of the most important literary figures of his era, American-born author Henry James possessed a unique knack for describing the idiosyncrasies of dysfunctional families. The Ambient family at the center of the novella The Author of Beltraffio ranks among his most compelling creations. The patriarch Mark Ambient is an acclaimed novelist whose wife strongly disapproves of his work. Will this discordance bring the family to its knees?
Henry James Writes New York
Author: Leonardo Buonomo
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031681266
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031681266
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
The Notebooks of Henry James
Author: Henry James
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226511049
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 456
Book Description
"For other novelists the value of Henry James's Notebooks is immense and to brood over them a major experience. The glow of the great impresario is on the pages. They are occasionally readable and endlessly stimulating, often moving and are ocasionally relieved by a drop of gossip."—V. S. Pritchett, New Statesman "The Notebooks take us into his study, and here we can observe him, at last, in the very act of creation at his writing table."—Leon Edel, Atlantic Monthly "A document of prime importance."—Edmund Wilson, New Yorker
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226511049
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 456
Book Description
"For other novelists the value of Henry James's Notebooks is immense and to brood over them a major experience. The glow of the great impresario is on the pages. They are occasionally readable and endlessly stimulating, often moving and are ocasionally relieved by a drop of gossip."—V. S. Pritchett, New Statesman "The Notebooks take us into his study, and here we can observe him, at last, in the very act of creation at his writing table."—Leon Edel, Atlantic Monthly "A document of prime importance."—Edmund Wilson, New Yorker