The Catholic Side of Henry James (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: 1st ed., 7/1/1993
EAN 9780521432023, ISBN10: 0521432022
Hardcover, 190 pages, 23.6 x 16.2 x 2 cm
Language: English
The Catholic Side of Henry James reveals the profound Catholic imagery in the work of Henry James. Edwin Fussell questions conventional critical assumptions about James' secularity and shows that James' career began with narratives of Catholic conversion and ended with his masterpiece of Catholic eccentricity and alienation, The Golden Bowl. The interplay of men and women, of America and Europe - those acknowledged Jamesian themes - comes to be overlaid with the interplay between Protestant and Catholic. Fussell's examination ranges from James' early reviews of religious books for the Nation and early tales like 'De Grey: A Romance' through much of the canon, along the way re-examining James' overlooked play Guy Domville and climaxing with a magnificent reading of The Golden Bowl, convincingly demonstrating James' involvement with Catholic themes.
Preface
Calendar
chief items of Catholic interest in Henry James
Documentation
Part I. Bibliographical Leads, Historical Considerations
Part II. Representing Catholicity
1. The Protestant base
2. Liberalism
3. The picturesque
4. The question of religious audience
5. Sacred seculars in the tales
6. Sacred seculars
novel, letter, and notebook
7. Death and literary form
Part III. The Narratives of Catholic Conversion
1. Watch and Ward (1871)
2. Italian sketches and Italian tales (1870–5)
3. Roderick Hudson (1875)
4. The American (1876–7)
5. Attenuations
The Reverberator (1888)
6. Supersubtlety one
What Maisie Knew (1897)
7. Supersubtlety two
The Turn of the Screw (1898)
Part IV. Pas de quatre
1. Catholicity neat
'Gabrielle de Bergerac' (1869)
2. Secularizing Catholicity
'The Altar of the Dead' (1895)
3. Protestantizing Catholicity
'The Great Good Place' (1900)
4. Satirizing secularity
'The Birthplace (1903)
Part V. The Catholic Ménage as Literary Space
1. 'De Grey
A Romance' (1868)
2. Guy Domville (1893, 1895)
3. The Golden Bowl (1904)
the crown of his career
Part VI. 'Prove that I'm Not!' - Toward the Impossibility of Interpretation
Notes
Index.