Decadence in the Late Novels of Henry James

Decadence in the Late Novels of Henry James PDF Author: A. Kventsel
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230206379
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Looking at the novels of James's major phase in the context of fin-de-siècle decadence, this book illuminates central issues in the James corpus and central aspects of a rich and fraught cultural moment. Through a close examination of the textures of the novels, Kventsel defines and explores their psycho-cultural field of meaning.

Decadence in the Late Novels of Henry James

Decadence in the Late Novels of Henry James PDF Author: A. Kventsel
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230206379
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Looking at the novels of James's major phase in the context of fin-de-siècle decadence, this book illuminates central issues in the James corpus and central aspects of a rich and fraught cultural moment. Through a close examination of the textures of the novels, Kventsel defines and explores their psycho-cultural field of meaning.

Henry James Against the Aesthetic Movement

Henry James Against the Aesthetic Movement PDF Author: David Garrett Izzo
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786480041
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Writer Henry James (1843-1916) was born in America but preferred to live in Europe; he finally become a British subject near the end of his life. His status as a permanent outsider is responsible for the recurring themes in his writing dealing with European sophistication (decadence) compared to American lack of sophistication (or innocence). He is respected in modern times for his psychological insight, for being able to reveal his characters' deepest motivations. These 11 essays, along with an introduction and an afterword, examine James's work through the prism of the author's latest style. Topics the contributing authors address include the Henry James revival of the 1930s, three of James's male aesthetics, women in his works, literary forgery, and parallels with the career and views of Margaret Oliphant. Three essays delve into issues of representation in art and fiction, then three more explore decadence, identity and homosexuality.

Seeds of Decadence in the Late Nineteenth-Century Novel

Seeds of Decadence in the Late Nineteenth-Century Novel PDF Author: Suzanne Nalbantian
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349104507
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
A comparative assessment of the transmutation of a decadent mentality into an identifiable narrative style. The author examines the work of five major novelists in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and attempts to trace perplexities, perversities and combinations of excess.

Lateness and Modern European Literature

Lateness and Modern European Literature PDF Author: Ben Hutchinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198767692
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
Modern European literature has traditionally been seen as a series of attempts to assert successive styles of writing as 'new'. In this groundbreaking study, Ben Hutchinson argues that literary modernity can in fact be understood not as that which is new, but as that which is 'late'. Exploring the ways in which European literature repeatedly defines itself through a sense of senescence or epigonality, Hutchinson shows that the shifting manifestations of lateness since romanticism express modernity's continuing quest for legitimacy. With reference to a wide range of authors--from Mary Shelley, Chateaubriand, and Immermann, via Baudelaire, Henry James, and Nietzsche, to Valéry, Djuna Barnes, and Adorno--he combines close readings of canonical texts with historical and theoretical comparisons of numerous national contexts. Out of this broad comparative sweep emerges a taxonomy of lateness, of the diverse ways in which modern writers can be understood, in the words of Nietzsche, as 'creatures facing backwards'. Ambitious and original, Lateness and Modern European Literature offers a significant new model for understanding literary modernity.

Psychology in the Fiction of Henry James

Psychology in the Fiction of Henry James PDF Author: Teckyoung Kwon
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1666905755
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Psychology in the Fiction of Henry James: Memory, Emotions, and Empathy focuses on the study of consciousness, also examines new ways to read fiction from a scientific perspective, one that draws upon early psychological theories and recent neuroscientific research. Freud and William James stand together as intellectual pioneers who contributed to our understanding of the revolutionary concept of consciousness. Meanwhile, Henry James devoted his life to the development of narrative methods that would extend the realm of Realism: a pursuit that led him to draw upon consciousness and experience alike. When examining these three figures, the key components of consciousness that they shared in common turn out to be memory, emotions, and empathy. This volume deals with theoretical works on those three concepts by the works of Freud, William James, and recent neuroscientists, as well as two narrative techniques Henry James devised to represent consciousness: ghosts and Free Indirect Discourse. Additionally, this book is an analysis of Henry’s major fictions to show how those scientific terms have been used to achieve a fresh reading of his novels. Overall, this volume demonstrates that the three components are elements in the dual-aspect monism that Freud proposed earlier.

Henry James in Context

Henry James in Context PDF Author: David McWhirter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316154203
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
Long misread as a novelist conspicuously lacking in historical consciousness, Henry James has often been viewed as detached from, and uninterested in, the social, political, and material realities of his time. As this volume demonstrates, however, James was acutely responsive not only to his era's changing attitudes toward gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity, but also to changing conditions of literary production and reception, the rise of consumerism and mass culture, and the emergence of new technologies and media, of new apprehensions of time and space. These essays portray the author and his works in the context of the modernity that determined, formed, interested, appalled, and/or provoked his always curious mind. With contributions from an international cast of distinguished scholars, Henry James in Context provides a map of leading edge work in contemporary James studies, an invaluable reference work for students and scholars, and a blueprint for possible future directions.

Henry James in Context

Henry James in Context PDF Author: David McWhirter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521514614
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
The fullest single volume work of reference on James's life and his interactions with the world around him.

Henry James and the Art of Impressions

Henry James and the Art of Impressions PDF Author: John Scholar
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198853513
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Henry James criticized the impressionism movement, yet time and again used the word 'impressio' to represent his characters's consciousness, as well as the work of the literary artist. This book explores this anomaly, placing James's work within the wider cultural history of impressionism.

The Materials of Exchange between Britain and North East America, 1750-1900

The Materials of Exchange between Britain and North East America, 1750-1900 PDF Author: Daniel Maudlin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317024397
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Taking a multidisciplinary approach to the complex cultural exchanges that took place between Britain and America from 1750 to 1900, The Materials of Exchange examines material, visual, and print culture alongside literature within a transatlantic context. The contributors trace the evolution of Anglo-American culture from its origins as a product of the British North Atlantic Empire through to its persistence in the post-Independence world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While transatlanticism is a well-established field in history and literary studies, this volume recognizes the wider diversity and interactions of transatlantic cultural production across material and visual cultures as well as literature. As such, while encompassing a range of fields and approaches within the humanities, the ten chapters are all concerned with understanding and interpreting the same Anglo-American culture within the same social contexts. The chapters integrate the literary with the material, offering alternative and provocative perspectives on topics ranging from the child-made book to representations of domestic slaves in literature, by way of history painting, travel writing, architecture and political plays. By focusing on cultural exchanges between Britain and the north-eastern maritime United States over nearly two centuries, the collection offers an in-depth study of Britain’s relationship with a single region of North America over an extended historic period. Contributors have resisted the temptation to prioritize the relationship between New England and England in particular by placing this association within the contexts of Atlantic exchanges with other northeastern states as well as with the South, the Caribbean and Scotland. Intended for researchers in literature, visual and material culture, this collection challenges single-subject boundaries by redefining transatlantic studies as the collective examination of the complex and interrelated cultural t

The Degenerate Muse

The Degenerate Muse PDF Author: Robin G. Schulze
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199920338
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A tide of newfound prosperity swept through America as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth. Modernity had arrived. Yet amid this climate of progress, concerns over the perils of modernity and civilization began to creep into the national consciousness. Stress, overcrowding, and immigration stoked fears of degeneration among the white middle- and upper classes. To correct course, the Back to Nature movement was born. By shedding the shackles of modernity and embracing the great outdoors, Americans could keep fit and stave off a descent down the evolutionary ladder. Drawing on a wide range of primary and archival sources, Robin Schulze examines how the return to nature altered the work of three modernist poets: Harriet Monroe, Ezra Pound, and Marianne Moore. Like other Americans of their day, the trio heeded the widespread national call to head back to nature for the sake of the nation's health, but they faced a difficult challenge. Turning to nature as a means to combat the threat of degeneration in their literary and editorial work, they needed to envision a form of poetry that would be a cure for degeneration rather than a cause. The Degenerate Muse reveals the ways in which Monroe, Pound, and Moore struggled to create and publish poems that resisted degeneration by keeping faith with nature-influenced ideas about what American poetry should be and do in the twentieth century. A combination of environmental history and modernist studies, The Degenerate Muse reveals that the American relationship to nature was a key issue of modernity and an integral part of literary modernism.