Michèle Mendelssohn
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623853
- eISBN:
- 9780748651634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623853.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
In the early 1880s, Henry James made the transatlantic aesthete his own despite the figure's increasing association with Oscar Wilde. Though James privately dissociated himself from Wilde's artistic, ...
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In the early 1880s, Henry James made the transatlantic aesthete his own despite the figure's increasing association with Oscar Wilde. Though James privately dissociated himself from Wilde's artistic, sexual and identity politics, vestigial markers remain apparent in James's fiction. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Wilde situated his art theory in reaction to that of James and James McNeill Whistler, defining an oppositional aesthetic through a process of imaginative review-as-revision that aimed to mitigate Realism's vivisectionist tendencies. This chapter marks the demise of Aestheticism and the beginning of James's decadent turn. First, it analyses the language of puerility and animality that pervades James's and Wilde's interaction. It then charts the manner in which, post-1895, both authors recuperate this idiom to describe an innocent and erotic child of power that radically undermines Aestheticism's moral stance. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and De Profundis replicate and interrogate the unmitigated state of moral crisis that resulted from Wilde's trial. In this final crisis, both narratives radically reassess Aestheticism's central tenets, particularly its uncoupling of the aesthetic and the moral.Less
In the early 1880s, Henry James made the transatlantic aesthete his own despite the figure's increasing association with Oscar Wilde. Though James privately dissociated himself from Wilde's artistic, sexual and identity politics, vestigial markers remain apparent in James's fiction. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Wilde situated his art theory in reaction to that of James and James McNeill Whistler, defining an oppositional aesthetic through a process of imaginative review-as-revision that aimed to mitigate Realism's vivisectionist tendencies. This chapter marks the demise of Aestheticism and the beginning of James's decadent turn. First, it analyses the language of puerility and animality that pervades James's and Wilde's interaction. It then charts the manner in which, post-1895, both authors recuperate this idiom to describe an innocent and erotic child of power that radically undermines Aestheticism's moral stance. ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and De Profundis replicate and interrogate the unmitigated state of moral crisis that resulted from Wilde's trial. In this final crisis, both narratives radically reassess Aestheticism's central tenets, particularly its uncoupling of the aesthetic and the moral.
Catherine Toal
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823269341
- eISBN:
- 9780823269396
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823269341.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter proposes a new understanding of the importance of French-naturalist literary influence for Henry James, and thereby, of the configuration of Jamesian narrative form, and the role of his ...
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This chapter proposes a new understanding of the importance of French-naturalist literary influence for Henry James, and thereby, of the configuration of Jamesian narrative form, and the role of his experimental “middle period” in clarifying its contours. It argues that James’s main objection to naturalism (particularly the work of the Goncourts and Flaubert) lies in the “cruelty” with which it negates the aspirations of its characters. However, contrary to the orthodoxies of literary history, Jamesian “point of view” is only ostensibly based on a liberal commitment to respecting individual perspectives. Through a new reading of The Turn of the Screw, which shows it to expose the blueprint and rationale of Jamesian plot in general, the chapter suggests that Jamesian narrative pursues the apparent indulgence of desire while undercutting it through formal means. The exposition of James’s text, drawing upon Lacanian psychoanalysis, indicates the meaning of a concept of cruelty for the latter theory.Less
This chapter proposes a new understanding of the importance of French-naturalist literary influence for Henry James, and thereby, of the configuration of Jamesian narrative form, and the role of his experimental “middle period” in clarifying its contours. It argues that James’s main objection to naturalism (particularly the work of the Goncourts and Flaubert) lies in the “cruelty” with which it negates the aspirations of its characters. However, contrary to the orthodoxies of literary history, Jamesian “point of view” is only ostensibly based on a liberal commitment to respecting individual perspectives. Through a new reading of The Turn of the Screw, which shows it to expose the blueprint and rationale of Jamesian plot in general, the chapter suggests that Jamesian narrative pursues the apparent indulgence of desire while undercutting it through formal means. The exposition of James’s text, drawing upon Lacanian psychoanalysis, indicates the meaning of a concept of cruelty for the latter theory.
Nicholas Royle
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748636549
- eISBN:
- 9780748652303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748636549.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter presents a discussion on linguistic turn. The notion of a literary turn might sound implausible in a different way. Uses of Literature poses as an intellectually progressive, ...
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This chapter presents a discussion on linguistic turn. The notion of a literary turn might sound implausible in a different way. Uses of Literature poses as an intellectually progressive, non-reductive book about the contemporary value and importance of literature, in which Jacques Derrida has apparently been airbrushed out of the picture and out of history. The literary turn would be at once about the ‘literary in theory’ and more specifically about new ways of registering the place of literature in the light of Derrida's work. The literary turn can be tracked according to three interrelated modes or registers. Two words for Henry James, two words from Henry James, in place of a conclusion apropos the literary turn. The Turn of the Screw might seem very much a land-text, a novel told in a house, about a house, and about what haunts so-called home-territory.Less
This chapter presents a discussion on linguistic turn. The notion of a literary turn might sound implausible in a different way. Uses of Literature poses as an intellectually progressive, non-reductive book about the contemporary value and importance of literature, in which Jacques Derrida has apparently been airbrushed out of the picture and out of history. The literary turn would be at once about the ‘literary in theory’ and more specifically about new ways of registering the place of literature in the light of Derrida's work. The literary turn can be tracked according to three interrelated modes or registers. Two words for Henry James, two words from Henry James, in place of a conclusion apropos the literary turn. The Turn of the Screw might seem very much a land-text, a novel told in a house, about a house, and about what haunts so-called home-territory.
Richard Locke
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231157834
- eISBN:
- 9780231527996
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231157834.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter analyzes the depiction of children in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898). The novel follows two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, who were born in India and taken under the ...
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This chapter analyzes the depiction of children in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898). The novel follows two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, who were born in India and taken under the care of their grandparents. When their grandparents died, the children were then brought to England by their uncle, and were cared for by an inexperienced governess who was given “supreme authority” over them. The novel dramatizes the abuse of adult authority in the name of “forming” children's souls and social and intellectual behavior, thereby confirming the adult's construction of reality—even sanity—and justifying the adult's power and moral virtue. Throughout the narrative, the children attempt to achieve conventional childhoods.Less
This chapter analyzes the depiction of children in Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898). The novel follows two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, who were born in India and taken under the care of their grandparents. When their grandparents died, the children were then brought to England by their uncle, and were cared for by an inexperienced governess who was given “supreme authority” over them. The novel dramatizes the abuse of adult authority in the name of “forming” children's souls and social and intellectual behavior, thereby confirming the adult's construction of reality—even sanity—and justifying the adult's power and moral virtue. Throughout the narrative, the children attempt to achieve conventional childhoods.
Peter Coviello
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814717400
- eISBN:
- 9780814717424
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814717400.003.0010
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
This chapter maintains that one legacy of the transformations in sexual ordering exemplified by the Wilde trials (1895) is an estrangement of ways of imagining sex otherwise: outside of solidifying ...
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This chapter maintains that one legacy of the transformations in sexual ordering exemplified by the Wilde trials (1895) is an estrangement of ways of imagining sex otherwise: outside of solidifying taxonomies of hetero and homo, and in configurations unauthorized by those identities and their codings of the body's capacities for pleasure, perturbation, and attachment. Drawing from the literature of the period, and from contemporary queer scholars like Christopher Castiglia and Molly McGarry, the book generally gathers an archive of uncreated futures and possibilities that would not result into being. The chapter explains how the becoming-legible of homosexual identity made the world more rather than less habitable for some, richer in possibility, wider, and freer. It explores Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, in which he portrays a time and place where the signs of a specifically sexual signification supersaturate the lifeworld.Less
This chapter maintains that one legacy of the transformations in sexual ordering exemplified by the Wilde trials (1895) is an estrangement of ways of imagining sex otherwise: outside of solidifying taxonomies of hetero and homo, and in configurations unauthorized by those identities and their codings of the body's capacities for pleasure, perturbation, and attachment. Drawing from the literature of the period, and from contemporary queer scholars like Christopher Castiglia and Molly McGarry, the book generally gathers an archive of uncreated futures and possibilities that would not result into being. The chapter explains how the becoming-legible of homosexual identity made the world more rather than less habitable for some, richer in possibility, wider, and freer. It explores Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, in which he portrays a time and place where the signs of a specifically sexual signification supersaturate the lifeworld.
Richard Locke
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231157834
- eISBN:
- 9780231527996
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231157834.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book analyzes ten books in which children feature as critical characters and assesses the ways the children in these novels have been used to explore and evade large social, psychological and ...
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This book analyzes ten books in which children feature as critical characters and assesses the ways the children in these novels have been used to explore and evade large social, psychological and moral problems. The novels the book explores portray children so vividly that their names are instantly recognizable. The book traces the 130-year evolution of these iconic child characters, moving from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; from Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to Peter Pan and his modern American descendant, Holden Caulfield; and finally to Lolita and Alexander Portnoy. The book highlights the fact that many classic English and American novels focus on children and adolescents not as colorful minor characters but as the intense center of attention. It shows that, despite many differences of style, setting, and structure, all these novels enlist a particular child's story as part of a larger cultural narrative. The book demonstrates the way these great novels work, how they spring to life from their details and how they both invite and resist interpretation and provoke rereading. It conveys the variety and continued vitality of these books as they shift from Victorian moral allegory to New York comic psychoanalytic monologue, from a child who is an agent of redemption to one who is a narcissistic prisoner of guilt and proud rage.Less
This book analyzes ten books in which children feature as critical characters and assesses the ways the children in these novels have been used to explore and evade large social, psychological and moral problems. The novels the book explores portray children so vividly that their names are instantly recognizable. The book traces the 130-year evolution of these iconic child characters, moving from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; from Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to Peter Pan and his modern American descendant, Holden Caulfield; and finally to Lolita and Alexander Portnoy. The book highlights the fact that many classic English and American novels focus on children and adolescents not as colorful minor characters but as the intense center of attention. It shows that, despite many differences of style, setting, and structure, all these novels enlist a particular child's story as part of a larger cultural narrative. The book demonstrates the way these great novels work, how they spring to life from their details and how they both invite and resist interpretation and provoke rereading. It conveys the variety and continued vitality of these books as they shift from Victorian moral allegory to New York comic psychoanalytic monologue, from a child who is an agent of redemption to one who is a narcissistic prisoner of guilt and proud rage.