"A bibliographical note: Blackmur's essays on Henry James": p. 243-244. Includes index.

Focusing on James's last three completed novels - The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl - Maya Higashi Wakana shows how a microsociological approach to James's novels radically revises the widespread tradition of putting James's characters into historical and cultural contexts. Wakana begins with the premise that day-to-day living is inherently theatrical and thus duplicitous, and goes on to show that James's art relies significantly on his powerful sense of the agonizing and even dangerous complications of mundane face-to-face rituals that pervade his work. Centrally informed by social thinkers such as G. H. Mead and Erving Goffman, Wakana's study discloses the richness, complexity, and singularity of the interpersonal connections depicted in James's late novels. Persuasively argued, and rich in original close readings, her book makes an important contribution to James's studies and to theories of social interaction.

From 1929 to the latest issue, American Literature has been the foremost journal expressing the findings of those who study our national literature. American Literature has published the best work of literary historians, critics, and bibliographers, ranging from the founders of discipline to the best current critics and researchers. The longevity of this excellence lends a special distinction to the articles in American Literature. Presented in order of their first appearance, the articles in each volume constitute a revealing record of developing insights and important shifts of critical emphasis. Each article has opened a fresh line of inquiry, established a fresh perspective on a familiar topic, or settled a question that engaged the interest of experts.

Armstrong suggests that James's perspective is essentially phenomenological--that his understanding of the process of knowing, the art of fiction, and experience as a whole coincides in important ways with the ideas of the leading phenomenologists. He examines the connections between phenomenology's theory of consciousness and existentialism's analyses of the lived world in relation to James's fascination with consciousness and what is commonly called his Originally published in 1983. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

No detailed description available for "Henry James's Psychology of Experience".

Both James’s life and his literary career might be figured as a double spiral rooted at the one end in the American soil and in romanticism, contracting in its middle on contact with France and French naturalism and expanding again into the Anglo-Saxon world and into the twentieth century. The spiral—which also suggests the artist’s indirect approach to reality—strikes me as an adequate symbol for Henry James. From Bramante’s ramp in the Vatican to F.L. Wright’s in the Guggenheim Museum it has always been the favourite shape of all those who claimed greater freedom for the artist, rejected the fixity of academic rules and were convinced that art, like the spirit of man, is capable of endless progress.

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Examines the life and writings of Henry James including detailed synopses of his works, explanations of literary terms, biographies of friends and family, and social and historical influences.