The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that makes it appear to us that we have lived another life, that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience. Henry James A concept of 'illusion' was fundamental to the theory and practice of literary representation in Henry James. This book offers readings of James' fictional and critical texts that are informed by the certainty of illusion, and links James' mode of illusion with a number of concerns that have marked novel criticism in both the recent and not-so-recent past: gender, publicity, realism, aesthetics and passion, cults of authorial personality, the narrative construction of the future, and absorption. Flannery addresses each of these concerns through close engagement with particular texts: The Portrait of a Lady, The Tragic Muse, The Wings of the Dove, and some other less familiar texts. Although cognizant of debates that have raged around James as he is read both by 'radical' and 'traditional' critics, this book's primary focus is on the specific nuances of James’ texts and the interpretive challenges and pleasures they offer.

What can there possibly be left to say about . . .? This common litany, resonant both in and outside of academia, reflects a growing sense that the number of subjects and authors appropriate for literary study is rapidly becoming exhausted. Take heart, admonishes Richard Kopley in this dynamic new anthology--for this is decidedly not the case. While generations of literary study have unquestionably covered much ground in analyzing canonical writers, many aspects of even the most well-known authors--both their lives and their work-- remain underexamined. Among the authors discussed are T. S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Wright, Edith Wharton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, Henry James, Willa Cather, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain.

The fullest single volume work of reference on James's life and his interactions with the world around him.

For courses in American Literary Survey. This leading, two-volume anthology represents America's literary heritage from the colonial times of William Bradford and Anne Bradstreet to the contemporary era of Saul Bellow and Alice Walker. Volume II begins with Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and moves through Toni Morrison.

At the height of his career and the zenith of his creative powers, Henry James returned to works he had written up to thirty-five years before and "wrote them over" for the New York edition of his novels and tales (1907-1909). The first detailed study of the subject, this book uses new material to tell the story of James's heroic renewed commitment to his oeuvre. It examines the revision of particular works, shedding new light on interpretative controversies (especially with The Portrait of a Lady and Daisy Miller), and attends to questions of principle raised by the paradoxical processes of the reviser. Revealing James's painful struggle for perfection, the study illuminates his genius as a framer of sentences and a master of dramatic nuance. With both critical and biographical approaches, this vivid portrait of James's achievement will appeal to students of James and the novel.

This book contains selections from Volumes I and II of the Anthology of American Literature, Seventh Edition. Carefully selected works introduce readers to America's literary heritage, from the colonial times of William Bradford and Anne Bradstreet to the contemporary era of Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison. It provides a wealth of additional contextual information surrounding the readings as well as the authors themselves. An expanded chronological chart and interaction time line help readers associate literary works with historical, political, technological, and cultural developments. Other coverage includes a continued emphasis on cultural plurality, including the contributions to the American literary canon made by women and minority authors, and a reflection of the changing nature of the canon of American Literature. For anyone who likes to read the writings of American Literature--and wants to understand the connection between those words and their place in American history.

The Threads of The Scarlet Letter offers new discoveries regarding the origins of Hawthorne's masterpiece, as well as critical interpretations based on these discoveries. Relying on a blend of close reading, biographical analysis, and archival research, this book demonstrates anew the power of traditional scholarship. The Threads of The Scarlet Letter illuminates Hawthorne's transformation of Poe's celebrated tale The Tell-Tale Heart and Lowell's long-neglected poem A Legend of Brittany and, identifying the hitherto-unknown author of the seminal narrative The Salem Belle, investigates Hawthorne's brilliant borrowing from that novel as well. The present volume argues that Hawthorne repeatedly attenuated his sources, but also allowed sufficient detail to permit their recognition. Furthermore, this volume elaborates Hawthorne's reworking of formal traditions in The Scarlet Letter--traditions that importantly clarify the meaning of the whole. The Scarlet Letter is shown to be a complex rendering of man's fall and redemption, and a triumphant assertion of literary vocation. The Threads of The Scarlet Letter includes a useful bibliographical overview of the history of the study of the origins of Hawthorne's greatest work.

The Iconicity in Language and Literature series has long been dedicated to the recognition and understanding of the pervasiveness of iconicity in language in its many forms and functions. The present volume, divided into four sections, brings together and unifies different perspectives on iconicity. Chapters in the first section (Iconicity in language) provide linguistic analyses of systems of iconic forms in different languages, across both space (areally) and time (diachronically). The second section (Iconicity in literature) is concerned with stylistic analyses of iconicity in literature, in both poetry and prose and across a range of devices and genres. The third section (Iconicity in visual media) highlights the use and effects of iconicity in pictorial, photographic and cinematic media. The final section (Iconicity in semiotic analysis) offers a theoretical perspective, targeting an operationalisation of iconicity with respect to the relationship between types and subtypes of Peircean signs.