Henry James discusses the intricacies of writing in his piece “The Art of Fiction.” While the main binary in literature is between that of fiction and non-fiction, however James further distinguishes the category of fiction into romance and novel. While a romance exists for the form of entertainment and is driven by character development, a novel is more of an attempt to create a realistic representation of the current social standard. James declares that fiction is not just a leisure art form but meant to be taken seriously, as a historical text. In this piece James critiques the work of another author, Besant, and discredits the former hostility towards novels as a credible form of knowledge. Many of James’ key points are present in his short story “Daisy Miller: A Study” which follows a young girl’s journey through American society abroad. In this riveting tale James depicts a harshly vivid and real portrayal of a society with black and white views towards morality. Morality is a driving factor in the novel as it is in the society, and James’ own views regarding the strict moral environment is evident in the unexpected close of the novel. James follows his formula for a “serious” novel by acting as a historian, painting a clear and vivid portrayal of a specific social scene.
In “The Art of Fiction” James emphasized the rediscovery of fiction as a form of serious writing, a form of ascribed history. James asserts “The subject-matter of fiction is stored up likewise in documents and records, and if it will not give itself away…it must speak with assurance, with the tone of the historian” (377). In other words, the credibility of a work of fiction is in the hands of the author, if he cannot take his work ...
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...society has is presented in the novel, and Daisy’s death signifies the implications that challenging these norms may have. It is an ominous message on the part of James and reflects on his opinion of American society.
Works Cited
James, Henry. "The Art of Fiction." Tales of Henry James: the Texts of the Stories, the Author on His Craft, Background and Criticism. Ed. Christof Wegelin and Henry B. Wonham. Second ed. New York: Norton, 1984. Pgs. 375-94. Print. Further references are to this edition and will appear parenthetically in the text.
James, Henry. "Daisy Miller: A Study." Tales of Henry James: the Texts of the Stories, the Author on His Craft, Background and Criticism. Ed. Christof Wegelin and Henry B. Wonham. Second ed. New York: Norton, 1984. Pgs. 3-51. Print. Further references are to this edition and will appear parenthetically in the text.
Geoffrey C. Ward, Not For Ourselves Alone. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) : 65. 7 Ward, 67. -. 8 Dubois, 75-79. pp.
5. Collected Papers, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, (edd.) (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960). Volume and page number, respectively, noted in the text.
of the book. N. p. : Hackett, 1998. : p. 78. Print.
In this essay I will review a critique of James' Washington Square. I found the critique to be dry and rather clinical in its approach to this fine work by Henry James.
2.Ives, Charles, and John Kirkpatrick. Memos. Edited by John Kirkpatrick. New York: W.W. Norton, 1972. Print.
R. M. Ogilvie. Preface and Additional Material by S.P. Oakley. London: Penguin Books, 2003. Matthews, Roy T., F. De Witt Platt, and Thomas F. X. Noble. I am a naysayer.
Guerin, Wilfred L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, Jeanne C. Reesman, and John R. Willingham. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 125-156.
56, No. 3 (1989), pp. 543-569. The Johns Hopkins University Press. JSTOR. Web. 24 April 2014.
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 1993.
Both the 19th and 20th century authors of Henry James and Edith Wharton are commonly compared to one another and their works are criticized as being close to, if not, the same. For ten years, the two authors had been close friends and even traveled throughout France and Europe together looking for inspiration and new ideas. Wharton had never taken any type of criticism well. Eventually Edith Wharton sent her first written story, “The Line of Least Resistance,” to Henry James and she learned to accept criticism respectfully as one author to another. Henry James soon became a vital literary advisor in some of her most famous works. But soon she began to follow the example of James closely and started to write in his style. This style included the construction of appearances along with a tragic ending. Writing with the manners, customs, and beliefs of the upper class society, also allowed James to question the truth of that society. While including this style in Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton also reflects Henry James’s ideas of an unreliable narrator, through the view of a different gender than that of the author, from The Turn of the Screw. In writing through the mind of another person, Henry James and Edith Wharton both used their knowledge of psychology to influence their works. But while psychology is only a minor influence in Wharton’s work, her texts closely resemble that of an influence from James. Since Henry James was a friend, critic, and mentor to Edith Wharton, her novel Ethan Frome, published in 1911, reflects the influences James had on her writing, especially from his novel The Turn of the Screw, published in 1898.
The. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. a *(page) of the. Print. The. Lewis, C. W. & Co., Inc.
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...on. Vol. 34. Georgia State University, 2001. 39-53. H. W. Wilson Web. 22 Mar. 2004.
... middle of paper ... ...of the year. New York: Globe Books, Cambridge Division, 1981. Print. The. Chapter 1 Section VI.