Author: Henry JamesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
Novels and Stories of Henry James: -13. The tragic muse
Author: Henry JamesTragic Muse
Author: Rachel M. BrownsteinPublisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822315711
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
The great nineteenth-century tragedienne known simply as Rachel was the first dramatic actress to achieve international fame. Composing her own persona with the same brilliance and passion she demonstrated on stage, she virtually invented the role of "star." Rumors of her extravagant life offstage delighted the audiences who flocked to theaters in Boston and Paris, London and Moscow, to see her perform in the tragedies of Racine and Corneille. In Tragic Muse, Rachel M. Brownstein reveals the life of la grande Rachel and explores--at the boundary of biography, fiction, and cultural history--the connections between this self-dramatizing woman and her image. Born to itinerant Jewish peddlers in 1821, Rachel arrived on the Paris stage at the age of fifteen. She became both a symbol of her culture's highest art and a clue to its values and obsessions. Fascinated with all things Napoleonic, she was the mother of Napoleon's grandson and the lover of many men connected to the emperor. Her story--the rise from humble beginnings to queen of the French state theater--echoes and parodies Napoleon's own. She decisively controlled her career, her time, and finances despite the actions and claims of managers, suitors, and lovers. A woman of exceptional charisma, Rachel embodied contradiction and paradox. She captured the attention of her time and was memorialized in the works of Matthew Arnold, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Henry James. Richly illustrated with portraits, photographs, and caricatures, Tragic Muse combines brilliant literary analysis and exceptional historical research. With great skill and acuity, Rachel M. Brownstein presents Rachel--her brief intense life and the image that was both self-fashioned and, outliving her, fashioned by others. First published by Knopf (1993), this book will attract a broad audience interested in matters as wide ranging as the construction of character, the cult of celebrity, women's lives, and Jewish history. It will also be of enduring interest to readers concerned with nineteenth-century French culture, history, literature, theater, and Romanticism. Tragic Muse won the 1993 George Freedley Award presented by the Theater Library Association.
A Companion to Henry James
Author: Greg W. ZachariasPublisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111849234X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 534
Book Description
Written by some of the world's most distinguished Henry James scholars, this innovative collection of essays provides the most up-to-date scholarship on James’s writings available today. Provides an essential, up-to-date reference to the work and scholarship of Henry James Features the writing of a wide range of James scholars Places James’s writings within national contexts—American, English, French, and Italian Offers both an overview of contemporary James scholarship and a cutting edge resource for studying important individual topics
The Tragic Muse
Author: Henry JamesPublisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141922125
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 771
Book Description
'You must paint her just like that ... as the Tragic Muse' Suggests one of James's characters to Nick Dormer, the young Englishman who, during the course of the novel, will courageously resist the glittering Parliamentary career desired for him by his family, in order to paint. His progress is counterpointed by the 'Tragic Muse' of the title, Miriam Rooth, one of James's most fierily beautiful creations, a great actress indifferent to social reputation, and triumphantly dedicated to her art. In portraying the conflict between art and 'the world' which is his novel's central idea, James engaged obliquely with current debates on the new aestheticism of Pater and Wilde and on the nature of the actor's performance. Through the living complexity of his protagonists he reveals how much, as Philip Horne puts it, 'to take art seriously as an end in itself ... is still a provocative course'.
Henry James Against the Aesthetic Movement
Author: David Garrett IzzoPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786425784
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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.
The Burdens of Intimacy
Author: Christopher LanePublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226468600
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
Why does passion bewilder and torment so many Victorian protagonists? And why do so many literary characters experience moments of ecstasy before their deaths? In this original study, Christopher Lane shows why Victorian fiction conveys both the pleasure and anguish of intimacy. Examining works by Bulwer-Lytton, Swinburne, Schreiner, Hardy, James, Santayana, and Forster, he argues that these writers struggled with aspects of psychology that were undermining the utilitarian ethos of the Victorian age. Lane discredits the conservative notion that Victorian literature expresses only a demand for repression and moral restraint. But he also refutes historicist and Foucauldian approaches, arguing that they dismiss the very idea of repression and end up denouncing psychoanalysis as complicit in various kinds of oppression. These approaches, Lane argues, reduce Victorian literature to a drama about politics, power, and the ego. Striving instead to reinvigorate discussions of fantasy and the unconscious, Lane offers a clear, often startling account of writers who grapple with the genuine complexities of love, desire, and friendship.
The Reverberator
Author: Henry JamesTheory of Fiction: Henry James
Author: Henry JamesPublisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803257474
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 394
Book Description
Comprised of more than 250 selections from Henry James's stories about writers, his critical and speculative essays, his Notebooks, Prefaces, and letters, this collection brings together for the first time, in a single, systematic volume, all the important passages in James's work which have implications for or ideas about his theory of fiction. The result is the most comprehensive, exhaustive, and innovative volume of fictional theory ever published; in many ways it is the consummation of James's contribution to letters. In a masterful introductory essay, James E. Miller Jr., presents James's theory of fiction in outline; he also contributes brief introductions to each of the seventeen chapters, summarizing the major points. Abundant guides direct the reader to subjects and sources.
Novels, 1881-1886
Author: Henry JamesPublisher: Library of America
ISBN: 9780940450301
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1249
Book Description
Tells the stories of a fortune hunter, an American heiress living in Europe, and a naive young woman torn between love and idealism.
Critical Companion to Henry James
Author: Eric L. HaralsonPublisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438117272
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 529
Book Description
Examines the life and writings of Henry James including detailed synopses of his works, explanations of literary terms, biographies of friends and family, and social and historical influences.