Author: Henry JamesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Manitoba
Languages : en
Pages : 604
Book Description
The Princess Casamassima
Author: Henry JamesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Manitoba
Languages : en
Pages : 604
Book Description
The Bostonians
Author: Henry JamesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Boston (Mass.)
Languages : en
Pages : 280
Book Description
Meaning in Henry James
Author: Millicent BellPublisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674557628
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 412
Book Description
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.
Roderick Hudson
Author: Henry JamesPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rome (Italy)
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Roderick Hudson is a phenomenon among sculptors; carving life out of solid stone and moulding the wills of people no less easily. Moving to Rome with his patron and friend, he finds that Europe tests him in ways he had not anticipated, both as an artist and as a man.
The Reverberator
Author: Henry JamesOverthrow
Author: Caleb CrainPublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525560475
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418
Book Description
“The best American political novel of the 21st century.” —Sophia Nguyen, The Washington Post A New York Times Editors' Choice Longlisted for the 2020 Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize "A nineteenth-century social novel for the twenty-first-century surveillance state." —The New York Times Book Review "A political thriller with a radical spirit." —The Boston Globe A deeply humane novel that explores the fate of candor, good will, and the utopian spirit in a world where technology and surveillance are weaponizing human relationships One autumn night, as a grad student named Matthew is walking home from the subway, a handsome skateboarder catches his eye. Leif, mesmerizing and enigmatic, invites Matthew to meet his friends, who are experimenting with tarot cards. It's easier to know what's in other people's minds than most people realize, the friends claim. Do they believe in telepathy? Can they actually do it? Though Matthew should be writing his dissertation on the poetry of kingship, he soon finds himself falling in love with Leif--a poet of the internet age--and entangled with Leif's group as they visit the Occupy movement's encampment across the river, where they hope their ideas about radical empathy will help heal a divided world and destabilize the 1%. When the group falls afoul of a security contractor freelancing for the government, the news coverage, internet outrage, and legal repercussions damage the romances and alliances that hold the friends together, and complicate the faith the members of the group have--or, in some cases, don't have--in the powers they've been nurturing. Elspeth and Raleigh, two of Leif's oldest friends, will see if their relationship can weather the strains of criminal charges; Chris and Julia, who drifted into the group more recently, will have their loyalties tested; and Matthew, entranced by the man at the center of it all, will have to decide what he owes Leif and how much he's willing to give him. All six will be forced to reckon with the ambiguous nature of transparency and with the insidious natures of power and privilege. Overthrow is a story about the aftermath of the search for a new moral idealism, in a world where new controls on us--through technology, surveillance, the law--seem to be changing the nature and shape of the boundaries that we imagine around our selves. Caleb Crain, with astonishing sensitivity, acuity, and grace, has captured the deep unease and ambiguity that threaten our contemporary lives, and has written a beautiful novel about the redemptive possibilities of love and friendship.
In the Cage
Author: Henry JamesPublisher: Hesperus Press
ISBN: 1780940807
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128
Book Description
In this small masterpiece of unrequited love, Henry James, as in his greatest novels, depicts a moral consciousness torn between emotional impulses and the demands of society. Working in a post office in Mayfair, a young woman is exposed to the cryptic but alluring correspondence of the social elite, and in particular, to lines written by the dashing Captain Everard. As she memorizes the messages he telegraphs, she becomes increasingly attracted to the life described to her, fixated by scandal and gossip a world apart from her ordinary existence.
The Art of the Novel
Author: Henry JamesPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226392058
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
This collection of prefaces, originally written for the 1909 multi-volume New York Edition of Henry James’s fiction, first appeared in book form in 1934 with an introduction by poet and critic R. P. Blackmur. In his prefaces, James tackles the great problems of fiction writing—character, plot, point of view, inspiration—and explains how he came to write novels such as The Portrait of a Lady and The American. As Blackmur puts it, “criticism has never been more ambitious, nor more useful.” The latest edition of this influential work includes a foreword by bestselling author Colm Tóibín, whose critically acclaimed novel The Master is told from the point of view of Henry James. As a guide not only to James’s inspiration and execution, but also to his frustrations and triumphs, this volume will be valuable both to students of James’s fiction and to aspiring writers.
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.
Collected Stories
Author: Henry JamesPublisher: Everyman
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1286
Book Description
Encompassing a period of almost 50 years, the stories of Henry James represent the most remarkable feat of sustained literary creation in modern times. These two volumes contain his best work from 1866 to 1891.