Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Editions and Dates
- 1 Introduction: Trollope's Late Modernity
- 2 ‘Getting and Spending’: The Aesthetic Economist
- 3 ‘A Bond of Discord’: Colonialism and Allegory
- 4 ‘Convivial in a Cadaverous Fashion’: Satires on Sovereignty
- 5 ‘Active Citizens of a Free State’: Hellenising the History of Rome
- 6 ‘The Tone of Today’: Pedagogical Paraphrases
- 7 ‘An Admirable Shrewdness’: Character and the Law
- 8 ‘A Poise So Perfect’: Tact as Love
- 9 ‘Affectionate Reserve’: Tact as Comedy
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction: Trollope's Late Modernity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Editions and Dates
- 1 Introduction: Trollope's Late Modernity
- 2 ‘Getting and Spending’: The Aesthetic Economist
- 3 ‘A Bond of Discord’: Colonialism and Allegory
- 4 ‘Convivial in a Cadaverous Fashion’: Satires on Sovereignty
- 5 ‘Active Citizens of a Free State’: Hellenising the History of Rome
- 6 ‘The Tone of Today’: Pedagogical Paraphrases
- 7 ‘An Admirable Shrewdness’: Character and the Law
- 8 ‘A Poise So Perfect’: Tact as Love
- 9 ‘Affectionate Reserve’: Tact as Comedy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For the most part, … he should be judged by the productions of the first half of his career; later, the strong wine was rather too copiously watered. His practice, his acquired facility, were such, that his hand went of itself, as it were, and the thing looked superficially like a fresh inspiration. But it was not fresh, it was rather stale; and though there was no appearance of effort, there was a fatal dryness of texture. Some of these ultimate compositions – Phineas Redux (Phineas Finn is much better), The Prime Minister, John Caldigate, The American Senator, The Duke's Children – have the strangest mechanical movement. (James 1883: 391)
Dismissing Anthony Trollope's late novels as artistically flawed, Henry James's obituary captures the tone of earlier and subsequent criticism. Stripped of its evaluative tenor, however, James's discernment of a ‘stale’ quality and ‘dryness of texture’ in Trollope's novels from Phineas Redux onward touches on the essence of Trollope's late style. Two models can be discerned in thinking about late style: in the first the late work is understood as providing a serene conclusion to the artist's career, while in the second the late work is presented as a restless departure from earlier efforts. Sophocles and Shakespeare are often nominated as the masters of the resolution, Hölderlin and Beethoven of the withdrawal. James's imagery suggests that the late Trollope should be included in the fold of the latter: Theodor Adorno describes Beethoven's late compositions in similar terms, as ‘wrinkled, even fissured. They are apt to lack sweetness, fending off with prickly tartness those interested merely in sampling them’ (Adorno 2005: 123). In the case of Beethoven's Spätstil, this harsh quality is the result of the formal laws that his late works obey. Combining complex polyphonic structures with trite ornaments, their style is impersonal and artificial, rather than spontaneous and organic. The role of conventions is essential in creating this effect. Even where Beethoven's late works use a singular syntax, ‘conventional formulae and phraseology are inserted. They are full of decorative trills, cadences, and fiorituras’ (Adorno 2005: 124). Although the intellectual and artistic differences between Beethoven and Trollope make an extensive comparison fruitless, it is remarkable that the texture of Trollope's late works, too, is both heavily patterned and shot through with flourishes.
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- Information
- Anthony Trollope's Late StyleVictorian Liberalism and Literary Form, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2016