Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: The Moment of Henry James
- 1 Men, Women, and the American Way
- 2 The James Family Theatricals
- 3 Henry James at Work
- 4 Henry James and the Invention of Novel Theory
- 5 Henry James and the Idea of Evil
- 6 Queer Henry In the Cage
- 7 The Unmentionable Subject in "The Pupil"
- 8 Realism, Culture, and the Place of the Literary: Henry James and The Bostonians
- 9 Lambert Strether's Excellent Adventure
- 10 James's Elusive Wings
- 11 Henry James's American Dream in The Golden Bowl
- 12 Affirming the Alien: The Pragmatist Pluralism of The American Scene
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Series List
8 - Realism, Culture, and the Place of the Literary: Henry James and The Bostonians
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: The Moment of Henry James
- 1 Men, Women, and the American Way
- 2 The James Family Theatricals
- 3 Henry James at Work
- 4 Henry James and the Invention of Novel Theory
- 5 Henry James and the Idea of Evil
- 6 Queer Henry In the Cage
- 7 The Unmentionable Subject in "The Pupil"
- 8 Realism, Culture, and the Place of the Literary: Henry James and The Bostonians
- 9 Lambert Strether's Excellent Adventure
- 10 James's Elusive Wings
- 11 Henry James's American Dream in The Golden Bowl
- 12 Affirming the Alien: The Pragmatist Pluralism of The American Scene
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Series List
Summary
In his 1907 preface to The American, on the subject of editing his own voluminous oeuvre for the New York Edition of his work, a meditative Henry James wrote that “it is as difficult... to trace the dividing-line between the real and the romantic as to plant a milestone between north and south.” The question of James's commitment to literary realism dogged him throughout his career, and it would continue to be linked (as his image suggests) with the problem of his commitment to national traditions and cultures. Some readers have argued that the whole body of James's work is marked by traces of the realist project; others argue that only specific texts stake their claims under the sign of realism, understood as an interest in contemporaneity and its psychic and social effects. The only point of consensus on this issue, it seems, concerns James's fiction of the mid-1880s, particularly The Princess Casamassima and The Bostonians. Taken together, these novels are said to instance the power and limits of James's experiments with realism, marking an “episode” in his evolving authorial practice.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Henry James , pp. 151 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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