Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 6 - Promising the Future

  • Stuart Burrows, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    Henry James and the Promise of Fiction
    Published online:
    26 October 2023
    Print publication:
    09 November 2023, pp 154-168

  • Summary

    My sixth chapter argues that if the promise is “a faculty for mastering the future as if it were the present,” as Paul Ricoeur puts it, then to remove the question of obligation from the act of promising, as James repeatedly does, transforms it into something closer to prophecy. This form of speech is at the heart of his late story “The Beast in the Jungle.” John Marcher’s belief in his own fate is a prophecy voiced by the very person it concerns. The result is a kind of rewriting of Oedipus. James’s hero, however, is not only fully responsible for the harm he does, he is blind from the very beginning.