Henry James and the Writing of Race and Nation

ISBN-13: 9780521497503 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 272 str.

Sara Blair; Albert Gelpi; Ross Posnock

Opis

In this study, Blair challenges Henry James' perceived status as the literary figurehead of an impregnable high culture. Emphasizing James' engagement in forms of popular culture (including ethnography, minstrelsy, photography, and journalism), Blair traces the ways in which his writing, steeped in these forms, acted as a force in the forging of racial, national, and cultural identity.

Recenzje

"This excellent study of Henry James marks an important turn in the scholarship of American literature, one that provokes reflection on why it has taken so long to read James through the precarious constitution of racial and national identities. ...Blair candidly describes how competing critical imperatives have enriched her approach.... The reader cannot help but notice how gracefully her writing flows...." The New England Quarterly

Spis treści

Introduction: making a difference: Henry James, literary culture, and racial theater; 1. First impressions: 'Questions of Ethnography' and the art of travel; 2. 'Preparation for culture': Anthony Trollope, the American Century, and the fiction of freedom; 3. 'Trying to be Natural': authorship and the power of type in The Princess Casamassima; 4. James, Jack the Ripper, and the cosmopolitan Jew: staging authorship in The Tragic Muse; 5. Documenting the alien: racial theater in The American Scene.