In his 1979 study, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism, Booth argues that there are five ways of approaching novels, or literary texts. The critic James Phelan summarizes these as follows: as an imitation of the world external… Read More ›
In the feverish political climate of the 1930s and 1940s outlined in the introductory section, American critics with left-wing sympathies tubarned James’s disavowal of any direct purpose for the novel against him. They approved of writers such as Theodore Dreiser… Read More ›
The novel has struggled to be taken seriously as an art form. The very title of James’s essay begins his campaign on its behalf: ‘art’ and ‘fiction’, often seen at odds with each other, are placed side by side here…. Read More ›
Henry James’s (1843 – 1916) distinctive contributions to the art of the novel were developed over a long career of some fifty years. Leon Edel, possibly the most renowned and respected James scholar, has indicated that James’s mature writing can… Read More ›
Realism was by no means a uniform or coherent movement; a tendency toward realism arose in many parts of Europe and in America, beginning in the 1840s. The major figures included Flaubert and Balzac in France, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Leo Tolstoy… Read More ›
Though Henry James (1843–1916) was an American novelist, he saw the word “American” as embracing a certain cultural openness, or in his words, a “fusion and synthesis of the various National tendencies of the world.”1 The experience underlying James’ creative… Read More ›
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