Henry James's enigmas : turning the screw of eternity?
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Henry James's enigmas : turning the screw of eternity?
（Nouvelle poétique comparatiste, no. 31）
P.I.E. Peter Lang, c2014
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [303]-309)
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Discovering Lamb House in 1896, Henry James fell under the spell of the words of Biblical "Wisdom" written on the tower clock of Rye parochial church: "For our time is a very shadow that passeth away". From the young bachelor's "angry vow" to "live for himself and turn the key on his heart" in Watch and Ward (1871) to the decisive The Turn of the Screw (1898) and to the final "turning the tables" on "an awful agent" of the Apollo Gallery in the nightmare of A Small Boy and Others (1913), this refined "ambassador" of American letters, sharing some of the idiosyncrasies of Sacher Masoch and Gustave Flaubert - Jean-Paul Sartre's "Idiot of the family" - waged a fantastic fight against neurosis for the mastery of his craft. This study explores the "gems" that spangle the "carpet" of his prose. The latter hints at a secret christology and shines with the desire to fight differently the modern Romains de la decadence depicted in Thomas Couture's famous painting. The myth of the Twins inspired by James's relationship with his brother William eventually led him to feel like "the heir of all the ages". Burning some letters to protect his privacy, the expatriate writer (1843-1916) constructed his oeuvre to share the sky of the literary world Pleiades, and found eternal rest under the vaults of Westminster Abbey.
Table of Contents
Content: Introduction: Towards Westminster Abbey: the Twin's Mythical Eternity - Deciphering Europe: Landscape and the Art of Fiction - Walter Pater, Henry James and Freud probing Leonardo da Vinci's Family Novel - Passionate Attraction: From Faraday, Swedenborg to Theophile Gautier, Charles Fourier and Wilde - Henry James and Sacher-Masoch: From the Love of Statues to the Fear of Ghosts - Investigating the Victorian Nursery: James's Self-Analysis of the "Frightened Cry-Baby" in the Hands of Dr Skinner - The Solar Myth: Twin Structures: Impulses of Death and Civilization - Anamorphosis and the Secret of Mr Tishbein seen "from the Jolly Corner" - Towards the Grotesque and Beyond: Caricature from Francis Grose to Dracula - A Love of James? - Conclusion: "The Heir of all the Ages" in the Pleiades of the Cultural West: a Symbolic Revolution.
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