Queer Impressions: Henry James' Art of Fiction (Studies in Major Literary Authors)

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Synopsis
Beginning with The Portrait of a Lady, this book shows how, in developing his unique form of realism, James highlights the tragic consequences of his American heroine's Romantic imagination, in particular, her Emersonian idealism. In order to expose Emerson's blind spot, a lacuna at the very centre of his New England Transcendentalism, James draws on the Gothic effects of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, thereby producing an intensification of Isabel Archer's psychological state and precipitating her awakening to a fuller, heightened consciousness. Thus Romanticism takes an aesthetic turn, becoming distinctly Paterian and unleashing queer possibilities that are further developed in James's subsequent fiction. This book follows the Paterian thread, leading to The Author of Beltraffio and Théophile Gauthier, and thereby establishing an important connection with French culture. Drawing on James's famous analogy between the art of fiction and the art of the painter, the book explores a possible link to the Impressionist painters associated with the literary circle Émile Zola dominated. It then turns to A New England Winter, a tale about an American Impressionist painter, and finds traces leading back to James's initiation prèmiere. The book closes with an exploration of the possible sources of Kate Croy's unspeakable father in The Wings of the Dove and proposes a possible intertext, one that provides direct insight into the Victorian closet.
Copyright:
2005

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
184 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781135490195
Related ISBNs:
9780415975339, 9780203959237, 9780415512961
Publisher:
Taylor and Francis
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Literature and Fiction, Language Arts
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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