Henry

James
giovedì 21 gennaio 2021 11:18

LIFE:

• 1843 New York

• Father religious philosopher and follower of Swedenborgenism .
○ He wanted that an international education for his children
○ James finds himself studying at a very age in Europe
○ Intellectuals belonging to Cambridge area that introduce James to European
arts and letters
• He does not share the puritan attitude that distinguish all intellectuals coming from
north
• His brother William became notable psychologist and most influential philosophers
• His sister practiced diaristic form
• Unsystematic formal schooling
• From childhood fascinated with literary and historical traditions in Europe ( he
believed were mostly absent in usa )
• 1862 attended briefly Harvard law school then quited because he wanted to became
a professional writer
• 1872 settled permanently in UK
• Literary career can be divided into 3 phases :
○ International theme ( Americans in Europe and European in america )
○ Social and political currents of 1870s and 1880s and exploration between
artists and society and the troubled psyches of oppressed children
○ Return to the international and cosmopolitan theme : complex narratives
• 1878 daisy miler :

○ Portrayal OF THE NEW AMERICAN GIRL.

○ Book used in the debates about the role of women in the American society
○ Became famous with this novel

• 1881 the portrait of a lady :

○ Most appreciated novel till today

○ Complex inner of his American characters rendered with greater depth and
stylistic innovation
○ Main characters sacrifice their own happiness for the sake of principle
○ For James renunciation is a form of self expression
○ Complex book but still readable compared with his later works where his
language and syntax became even more difficult to read
○ Themes similar with daisy miller
○ Book important for the technique he uses : precursore del modernismo e delle
sue tecniche

• James was extremely prolific:

○ He wrote 7 plays but were public failures so he returned to fiction

○ Last of his great 3 novels are :
§ The wings of the dove
§ The ambassadors
§ The golden bowl
Here represented the complexity and uncertainty of human consciousness.
They return to the international theme ( new insight : how people make their
own realities through their perceptions, impressions and inner motivations)

• 1904 and 1905 James visits america

• James becomes a naturalized English

IMPORTANT FACTS :

• Is the pinnacle (culmine) of literary realism and modernist fiction

• James fiction :
a. Stylistic power
b. Complexity of his insights
• Ability to create landscapes of ambiguity and doubt and the attention for details
• Very first to theorize how to theorize books from a naratological prospective:
‘The New York edition’ 1909 sort of anthology of his works where he
comments on his earlier works & discusses important naratological aspects of
fiction writing. He never employs scrintific language but only elegant and sort
of metaphoric language. He was worried that literature turned into a scientific
discipline

• Being an American :

○ It employs having possibilities in this very new country.

○ Being an American is a privilege because allowed the subject freedom to
choose and select the best from other cultures
○ Disposition towards what life has to offer

• Jamesian point of view :

○ He did not invent nothing

○ He put into practice this technique
○ He uses it to satle shades of meaning
○ Considered best practitioner of the point of view
○ First theorizer of the point of view

• International theme :

○ Is the relationship between the new and old world

○ This theme wasn’t new
○ James dealt much with this theme that he made it an international topic of his
time
○ Representation of the encounter/ clash of differnet social/cultural mores . So
difference between being born in america and growing up here & the fact of
being relocated in a different contest like the European one
○ Europe seen as luminal space where American identity is best put on focus :
In Europe the characters immerge as truly Americans because they have
the chance to discuss their own identity and values in which they believe

○ James vs Emerson :
§ Emerson : European experience as a test of owns confidence with owns
americaness. This experience should reinforce this confidence once back
home
§ James : when you go to Europe you should have a sort of openess but at
the same time still have that judgemental aspect of someone born and
raised in a foreign country. America was growing to much confident and
that’s why the americas exceptionalism should be questioned . There are
certain risk in believing a certain miticized versions of your own country

• Henry on the novella :

○ James pays attention to things that could not been easily seen . That is why he
insisted that novel writing should be recognised as art
○ He says that it has his own dignity and this dignity has not always been
recognized
○ The novella allows you to expand more and do something complicated at the
same time but of course with certain restraints
○ Can be defined as an exercise in narrative virtuosity : exercise on how to
condense depth

• The Aspern Papers 1888 :

○ Published originally in 1888 on Atlantic monthly

○ Then collected in a book , a revised version of the New York edition.
In this revised version of 1908 the caracheter of MISS TITA becomes MISS TINA
And the original last line is changed
○ Novella was begun in Florence at villa brichieri in 1886 and completed it in
Venice at palazzo barbaro
○ The origin of the book or the germ:

Salem-born Captain Edward Augustus Silsbee was a retired mariner,

collector and devotee of the poet Percy Shelley. Shelley was close with
Lord Byron and wrote several of his greatest works while in Byron's
company. The Shelleys were introduced to Byron through his mistress,
Claire Clairmont, the stepsister of Mary Shelley and mother of his
daughter Allegra.
Clairmont long outlived Percy Shelley, becoming more reclusive by the
year and shutting herself in with her middle-aged niece Pauline. Silsbee
believed that Clairmont possessed rare documents that would shed light
on Shelley and Byron’s relationship.
Silsbee traveled to her home in Florence, Italy, renting rooms with hopes
“that the old lady in view of her age and failing condition would die
while he was there, so that he might then put his hand upon the
documents” (Berendt).
Clairmont died in 1879 during Silsbee's stay, and after her death he
revealed his desire for the documents to Pauline. As in James’ tale, the
niece offered her hand in marriage in exchange for the documents.
Silsbee fled, never to return.

• One focalizer : unnamed narrator. Is a critic, a collector and editor. Is obsessed with
a legendary (fictional ) American poet Jeffrey aspern
• Venice imagine is presented as stereotypical: picturesque, gloomy atmosphere of
mystery etc.
• Narrator frustration is shared also by the reader
• Rise of literary celebrity : peek into the authors intimate life VS the right to privacy
• Venice as a refuge from modernity and publicity
• Expatriation : sets the question of the American identity
• The scholar unable to create prays on the legacy of the dead author
• Search for national literary glory : the narrator belittles the fact that the American
poet found his muse in Venice
• Sense of parodic decline far away from the great romantic way
• Juliana speaks the language of money. She mirrors the truth about the narrator and
wont let him use with her the langiage of love
• Narrator fails to comprehend the past and so does with the present