Journal ArticleDOI
The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James
Miriam Allott,Dorothea Krook +1 more
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This article is published in Modern Language Review.The article was published on 1963-04-01. It has received 46 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Consciousness & Trial by ordeal.read more
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Literature and the Taste of Knowledge
TL;DR: In this paper, among the analogies among analogies 1. What Henry knew 2. After such knowledge 3. Kafka and the Third Reich 4. Seven types of obliquity 5. Missing dates 6. The fictionable world Epilogue: the essays of our life
Book
Psychoanalytic criticism of the life and works of Henry James
Abstract: A survey of the psychoanalytic criticism of Henry James reveals the popularity of psychoanalytic theory among modern literary critics and the diversity in their approaches to it. Psychoanalytic criticism of James varies in response to changes in psychoanalytic theory and the popular accep tance of it. For example, critics of the 1920's and 1930's adopted the practice, then current, of using psychoanalysis to condemn Victorian sexual repressiveness and to condemn James as a typical Victorian. Later critics became more complex and cautious in their use of Freudian theory or departed from it to employ the modified theories put forth by the Neo-Freudians or the Jungians. To the Freudians it was significant that he was an inhibited Victorian gentleman whose writings are ambiguous, full of disguised sexual implications and suggestive symbolism. Neo-Freudians later found in his work evidence of an inferiority feeling and a need for self-fulfillment. Jungians noted a rebirth arche type which has a possible biographical significance. In their understanding of psychoanalysis, critics of James range from practicing psychoanalysts who adhere rigidly to the concepts of their respective schools, to laymen who are essentially ignorant of psychoanalysis but who apply those concepts which have been widely popularized or have been used previously by other critics, often mis interpreting them, as, for example, early critics misinter preted Freud's views on sexual freedom. Most are primarily students of literature who select and combine those psycho analytic principles which they feel best explain James or support their own critical theories. Most of the major themes running through Jamesian criticism are derived from the contributions of only a few critics, such as Van Wyck Brooks, who established the stereotype of James as expatriate, and Edmund Wilson, who stressed the "ambiguity" in his personality and writings. According to their preconceived opinion about James or about the nature of the artist, critics treat him as a psychologist or as a neurotic case. Peter Coveney and Robert Rogers, for example, analyze his works as unconscious revelations of his repressed desires and ignore their con scious and objective elements. Van Wyck Brooks and Maxwell Geismar call him neurotic because of their personal distaste for his politics or morals. In contrast, Edmund Wilson and Leon Edel treat the works as case studies by an intuitive psychologist, with an extraordinary insight into personality and motivation, derived partly from introspection. Despite little evidence to support such a view into the workings of his own mind, Oscar Cargill even suggests that James may have knowingly applied the theories of Freud
Dissertation
The impression in the essays and late novels of Henry James
TL;DR: The authors examined the meanings and uses of the impression in the essays and late novels of Henry James, and found that the impression crystallizes one of James's main themes, the struggle between art and life, a consequence of the competing empiricist and aesthetic tendencies that the thesis distinguishes within accounts of impression available to James.