HENRY JAMES 1843 1916 Life a wealthy cultured
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HENRY JAMES (1843 - 1916)
Life a wealthy cultured family father-- an eminent philosopher and reformer brother--a famous philosopher and psychologist developed a life-long friendship with Howells, who became his “moral police. “(道德榜样) the cultural influence of Europe In the Harvard Law School, he read French novelists and critics. He toured England, France and Italy, and met Flaubert and Turgenev. He settled down in London in 1876. In 1915 he became a British citizen.
PERSONAL INFORMATION • Henry James was born in New York in 1843. • He belonged to a rich family who could afford the private tutors and governesses that educated him, but he was above all a “devourer of books”.
PERSONAL INFORMATION • He was the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James. • At the age of twentyfive he was recognized as the best short story writer in America. • He never married.
PERSONAL INFORMATION • For many years he alternated visits to England, France and Italy to stays in the USA. • In 1875 he decided that Europe was his ideal home and settled in Paris, where he met Flaubert and Maupassant.
PERSONAL INFORMATION • Then he went to England where the most well-known writers of the period, such as Conrad and Kipling, accepted him as a friend appreciated his books.
PERSONAL INFORMATION • In 1915 he became British subject. He died in London in 1916 and was buried in Massachusetts. • In 1976 his ashes were removed to Poets’ corner in Westminster Abbey.
The author and his time • He never took part in public affairs or showed much interest in the economic and social changes of the period.
The author and his time • He was deeply interested in the contrast between the old world and the new one, between the European way of life, which he considered fascinating, sophisticated, rich in culture and tradition but corrupting, and the American one which he considered too rigid, Puritan but innocent.
Literary career: three stages • • a. 1865~1882: international theme The American 《美国人》 Daisy Miller 《黛西米勒》 The Portrait of a Lady 《贵妇画像》
• b. 1882~1895: inter-personal relationships and some plays • The novels and plays were poorly received but he got a better knowledge of literary techniques.
• c. 1895~1900: novels and tales dealing with childhood and adolescence, then back to international theme • The Turn of the Screw《螺丝在拧紧》 • What Maisie Knew 《梅西所知道的》 • The Ambassadors 《奉使记》 • The Wings of the Dove 《鸽翼》 • The Golden Bowl 《金碗》
Psychological novel • James changed the method of presentation in a novel, shifting the centre of gravity from action to its intellectual and fantastic aspects: external circumstances lose significance before the inward events that take place in a soul.
A new concept of the author • James eliminates the author and gives the reader the illusion of being present at the scene of action. • He presents events and the minds of the characters directly, without comments or explanations: Dramatize, only dramatize, is his lesson.
his fame rests upon his novels with James’s international theme are set against a large international background, usually between Europe and America novels focus on the confrontation of the two different cultures with two different groups of people representing two different value systems
American personalities of innocence, enthusiasm, vulgarity, ignorance, unsophistication, freshness, freedom, individuality contrast with European personalities of over-refinement, degeneration, complexity, high cultivation, American heroes and heroines, who confronted European sophistication, either triumphed over it or were overwhelmed.
James’s literary criticism(文学 评论) an indispensable part of his contribution is concerned with form devoted to human valu “The Art of Fiction” 《小说的艺术》 the artist should write about anything that concerns him, even the Art must be related to life ugly and the commonplace the aim of the novel is to present life "The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life"
James’s literary techniques 1. “point of view” 视角 method Explain the situation and character through one or several minds readers observe events and people through the consciousness of characters and participate in their experience
2. psychological analysis emphasizes the inner awareness and inward movement of characters the forerunner of "stream-ofconsciousness" novels the founder of psychological realism
Style – “stylist” a. over-elaborate style b. Language: highly-refined, polished, (文雅) insightful, accurate c. Construction: complicated, intricate are not the liking of the common readers
The Portrait of a Lady
Previewing questions: • 1. Why did Isabel choose Osmond? • 2. Why did she decide to return to her unhappy marriage at the end of the novel? • 3. Isabel’s characters. • 4. How did James show the conflicts between American and European cultures? • 5. Features in style. • 6. Meaning of the title. • 7. Themes of the novel.
• The novel is about how an American girl lose her naivety gradually, influenced by sophisticated European life. It is a rich and subtle study of what it would mean for a woman to practice the absolute selfdetermination, based on a completely individual nonconformist(不信奉英国国教 的) personal judgment, which Emerson had preached.
• This exploration of transcendental individualism as a guide to life may be compared with Melville’s exploration of the same idea in his creation of captain Ahab. There Melville examined the effect such conduct might have when adopted by a powerful and ruthless man.
• James, is much more concerned with the effect such an attitude may have on his heroine herself. Isabel Archer’s impact on the world around her is comparatively unimportant but the result in her own life is as devastating as Ahab’s, though not as violent, or perhaps, as final.
Evil • Madame Merle, Gilbert Osmand are James’ personification of aspects of evil. This belatedness of Evil, this understanding of it as a matter of texts and letters, ultimately became James’ great contribution to the imagination of evil. It leads James to the strategy of reasserting its importance by questioning it, challenging it actively, not asserting flatly its existence but making it a competitor in a world acknowledged to be skeptical of it.
Freedom • The work is based on Milton’s epic “Paradise Lost”. This is a novel of the fortunate fall. Just like in Milton’s poem, everything is pointed toward a defining of freedom. The novel certainly concerns the unexpectedly farreaching consequences of a character’s inadequacies of perception. But here we have a full development of necessity and freedom, circumstances and free will, in which each, bewilderingly, may take on the appearance of the other. And here alone, until James’ very last works will this freedom be achieved, precisely because a character will learn the deep comprehension of necessity.
THE TURN OF THE SCREW • It is a novelette, that is a short novel, a literary type in which James excelled.
The Turn of the Screw as a gothic romance • Gothic romances deal with an intense experience in a setting isolated from the conditions of everyday life. • Moreover, opposed to the novel, romances deal with those things we can never fully know, that we can never be sure
The Turn of the Screw as a gothic romance • The tale is pervaded by an air of mysterious and of horror and terror, that doesn’t depend on what will happen but on what is happening. • Finally, as in the Gothic romance, there is a strong undercurrent of sexuality and sadism, as well as a strange and nightmarish quality.
The Turn of the Screw as a folk tale • For its motif, that of children bewitched, enchanted by creature from another world-- or by the dead -- we can say that the TOTS is a folktale.
The Turn of the Screw as a psychological study • It deals not so much with ghosts but with their effects on those who see them. • In many of James’s tales of the supernatural, the ghosts represent the past of the people that see them.
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