Download or read book Henry James and the Abuse of the Past written by P. Rawlings and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-03-02 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry James and the Abuse of the Past explores the complex uses to which James puts his oblique experience of the American Civil War. Why does James use and abuse the past by fabricating and distorting people and events in his autobiographical work? The study integrates four elements: history, the past and problems of narration and representation; the homoerotics of the Civil war tales and other soldiering fiction; a life-long pre-occupation with Shakespeare as a historical figure; and theories of time as they come under the pressure of trauma and war. This well-written, insightful and persuasive study is an important contribution to James scholarship and will be of interest to any students and scholars of James

Download or read book The Turn of the Screw Illustrated written by Henry James and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-21 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Turn of the Screw is an 1898Horrornovella by Henry James that first appeared in serial format in Collier's Weekly magazine (January 27 - April 16, 1898). In October 1898 it appeared in The Two Magics, a book published by Macmillan in New York City and Heinemann in London. Classified as both gothic fiction and a ghost story, the novella focuses on a governess who, caring for two children at a remote estate, becomes convinced that the grounds are haunted.

Download or read book The Turn of the Screw written by Henry James and published by Aegitas. This book was released on 2024-08-22 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is a classic ghost story that continues to captivate readers over a century after its initial publication. Set in the late 19th century, the novella follows a young governess who is hired to care for two young children, Flora and Miles, at the remote and eerie Bly Manor. As the governess begins her duties, she becomes increasingly convinced that the manor is haunted by the spirits of the previous governess, Miss Jessel, and her lover, Peter Quint, who both died under mysterious circumstances. The story unfolds as the governess tries to protect the children from the malevolent ghosts, while also questioning her own sanity and the motives of the children in their interactions with the spirits. One of the most intriguing aspects of The Turn of the Screw is its unreliable narrator. The story is told through the perspective of the governess, whose mental state and perceptions of events are constantly called into question. This creates a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty, leaving readers to question whether the ghosts are real or just figments of the governess's imagination. James masterfully plays with the theme of perception and reality, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about the events at Bly Manor. Another striking element of the novella is its use of Gothic elements. The isolated location, the decaying mansion, and the presence of ghosts all contribute to the eerie atmosphere of the story. James also incorporates psychological horror, as the governess's fears and paranoia intensify throughout the story, building tension and suspense. The Turn of the Screw is a prime example of Gothic literature, with its exploration of the dark side of human nature and the blurred lines between the living and the dead. One of the most controversial aspects of the novella is its ambiguous ending. The governess's final confrontation with the ghosts and the fate of the children are left open to interpretation, inviting readers to ponder the true meaning of the story. Some critics argue that the ghosts are a product of the governess's overactive imagination, while others believe that they are real and that the children are in danger. This open-ended conclusion has sparked countless debates and interpretations, making The Turn of the Screw a thought-provoking and enduring piece of literature. In addition to its literary merits, The Turn of the Screw also offers insight into the societal norms and expectations of the time period in which it was written. James explores themes of gender roles and class distinctions through the character of the governess, who is expected to be subservient and obedient to her male employer and to maintain the social hierarchy between herself and the children. The story also touches on the taboo subject of sexual relationships, particularly in regards to the ghosts and their influence on the children. Ultimately, The Turn of the Screw is a haunting and enigmatic work that continues to captivate readers with its complex characters, Gothic atmosphere, and thought-provoking themes. It is a testament to Henry James's mastery of storytelling and his ability to create a sense of unease and suspense that lingers long after the final page. A must-read for anyone interested in Gothic literature, psychological thrillers, or the blurred lines between reality and the supernatural.

Download or read book Henry James in Context written by David McWhirter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long misread as a novelist conspicuously lacking in historical consciousness, Henry James has often been viewed as detached from, and uninterested in, the social, political, and material realities of his time. As this volume demonstrates, however, James was acutely responsive not only to his era's changing attitudes toward gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity, but also to changing conditions of literary production and reception, the rise of consumerism and mass culture, and the emergence of new technologies and media, of new apprehensions of time and space. These essays portray the author and his works in the context of the modernity that determined, formed, interested, appalled, and/or provoked his always curious mind. With contributions from an international cast of distinguished scholars, Henry James in Context provides a map of leading edge work in contemporary James studies, an invaluable reference work for students and scholars, and a blueprint for possible future directions.

Download or read book Henry James s Style of Retrospect written by Oliver Herford and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry James's Style of Retrospect traces James's engagement with the writing of the recent past across the last twenty-five years of his life and examines the thoroughgoing change his style underwent in this last phase of his career, as his focus turned from the observation of contemporary manners to biographical commemoration and autobiographical reminiscence, and the balance of his output gradually shifted from fiction to non-fiction. The 'late personal writings' of the book's subtitle are works of retrospective non-fiction. They are a varied group, representing a broad array of genres and occasions: commemorative essays and obituary tributes, textual revisions and accounts of revisiting familiar places, cultural and literary criticism, biography and autobiography, and family memoir. Oliver Herford proposes that we read the late personal writings as a coherent sequence, bound together by a close texture of cross-references and allusive echoes, and united by James's newly discovered sense for the literary possibilities of non-fiction. Closely analyzing the style of these writings, this study offers a boldly revisionist account of the way style itself challenges and preoccupies the very late James. A linked series of innovative close readings takes the major works of this period in sequence, addressing a key point of style in each: particular attention is paid to procedures of reference (to the historical past, to real persons and places and objects), a dimension of style often neglected and sometimes actively slighted in analyses of James's late work. Henry James's Style of Retrospect asks what it means for so distinguished a novelist to alter the foundations of his written manner so strikingly in late life, and shows how we may begin to reconfigure our understanding of late Jamesian aesthetics accordingly.

Download or read book Wastepaper Modernism written by Joseph Elkanah Rosenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Wastepaper Modernism' traces how 20th-century writers imagined the fate of paper at the dawn of a new media age.

Download or read book Contested Will written by James Shapiro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare’s death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays. Among the doubters have been such writers and thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Helen Keller. It is a fascinating story, replete with forgeries, deception, false claimants, ciphers and codes, conspiracy theories—and a stunning failure to grasp the power of the imagination. As Contested Will makes clear, much more than proper attribution of Shakespeare’s plays is at stake in this authorship controversy. Underlying the arguments over whether Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, or the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare’s plays are fundamental questions about literary genius, specifically about the relationship of life and art. Are the plays (and poems) of Shakespeare a sort of hidden autobiography? Do Hamlet, Macbeth, and the other great plays somehow reveal who wrote them? Shapiro is the first Shakespeare scholar to examine the authorship controversy and its history in this way, explaining what it means, why it matters, and how it has persisted despite abundant evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to him. This is a brilliant historical investigation that will delight anyone interested in Shakespeare and the literary imagination.

Download or read book Henry James and the Supernatural written by A. Despotopoulou and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-07-14 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of essays on ghostly fiction by Henry James. The contributors analyze James's use of the ghost story as a subgenre and the difficult theoretical issues that James's texts pose.

Download or read book Writing Pain in the Nineteenth Century United States written by Thomas Constantinesco and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers new readings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Alice James. Demonstrates how pain generates literary language and shapes individual and collective identities. Examines how nineteenth-century US literature mobilizes and challenges sentimentalism as a response to the problem of pain. Uses sustained close reading to illuminate the theoretical and historical work of literature.

Download or read book Before Einstein written by Elizabeth L. Throesch and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2017-01-02 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Before Einstein’ brings together previous scholarship in the field of nineteenth-century literature and science and greatly expands upon it, offering the first book-length study of not only the scientific and cultural context of the spatial fourth dimension, but also the literary value of four-dimensional theory. In addition to providing close critical analysis of Charles Howard Hinton’s Scientific Romances (1884–1896), ‘Before Einstein’ examines the work of H. G. Wells, Henry James and William James through the lens of four-dimensional theory. The primary value of Hinton’s work has always been its literary and philosophical content and influence, rather than its scientific authority. It is certain that significant late nineteenth-century writers and thinkers such as H. G. Wells, William James, Olive Schreiner, Karl Pearson and W. E. B. Du Bois read Hinton. Others, including Henry James, Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, were familiar with his ideas. Hinton’s fourth dimension appealed to scientists, spiritualists and artists, and – particularly at the end of the nineteenth century – the interests of these different groups often overlapped. Truly interdisciplinary in scope, ‘Before Einstein’ breaks new ground by offering an extensive analysis of four-dimensional theory's place in the shared history of Modernism.

Download or read book Palgrave Advances in Henry James Studies written by P. Rawlings and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores landmark criticism on a writer who continues to command critical attention. In addition to mapping out the existing critical terrain, these essays offer a sense of future trajectories in James studies. Essays consider James' own criticism and theories of narrative and architecture, James' letters, money and globalization.

Download or read book Great Shakespeareans Set I written by Peter Holland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-03 with total page 1078 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Great Shakespeareans offers a systematic account of those figures who have had the greatest influence on the interpretation, understanding and cultural reception of Shakespeare, both nationally and internationally. This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Great Shakespeareans will be an essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.

Download or read book Loyal Subjects written by Elizabeth Duquette and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Loyal Subjects considers how the Civil War complicated the cultural value of emotion, especially the ideal of sympathy.

Download or read book James Henry Hammond and the Old South written by Drew Gilpin Faust and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 1985-07-01 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From his birth in 1807 to his death in 1864 as Sherman’s troops marched in triumph toward South Carolina, James Henry Hammond witnessed the rise and fall of the cotton kingdom of the Old South. Planter, politician, and an ardent defender of slavery and white supremacy, Hammond built a career for himself that in its breadth and ambition provides a composite portrait of the civilization in which he flourished. A long-awaited biography, Drew Gilpin Faust’s James Henry Hammond and the Old South reveals the South Carolina planter who was at once characteristic of his age and unique among men of his time. Of humble origins, Hammond set out to conquer his society, to make himself a leader and a spokesman for the Old South. Through marriage he acquired a large plantation and many slaves, and then through their coerced labor, shrewd management practices, and progressive farming techniques, he soon became one of the wealthiest men in South Carolina. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives and served as governor of his state. Evidence that he sexually abused four of his teenage nieces forced him to retreat for many years to his plantation, but eventually he returned to public view, winning a seat in the United States Senate that he resigned when South Carolina seceded from the Union. James Henry Hammond’s ambition was unquenchable. It consumed his life, directed almost his every move and ultimately, in its titanic calculation and rigidity, destroyed the man confined within it. Like Faulkner’s Thomas Sutpen, Faust suggests, Hammond had a “design,” a compulsion to direct every moment of his life toward self-aggrandizement and legitimation. Despite his sexual abuse of enslaved females and their children, like other plantation owners, Hammond envisioned himself as benevolent and paternal. He saw himself as the absolute master of his family and slaves, but neither his family, his slaves, nor even his own behavior was completely under his command. Hammond fervently wished to perfect and preserve what he envisioned as the southern way of life. But these goals were also beyond his control. At the time of his death it had become clear to him that his world, the world of the Old South, had ended.

Download or read book Henry James at Work written by Theodora Bosanquet and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006-11-27 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The delightful memoir by James's feisty and feminist secretary, with a biographical essay and excerpts from her diaries

Download or read book Daisy Miller written by Henry James and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2011-11-14 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry James’s Daisy Miller was an immediate sensation when it was first published in 1878 and has remained popular ever since. In this novella, the charming but inscrutable young American of the title shocks European society with her casual indifference to its social mores. The novella was popular in part because of the debates it sparked about foreign travel, the behaviour of women, and cultural clashes between people of different nationalities and social classes. This Broadview edition presents an early version of James’s best-known novella within the cultural contexts of its day. In addition to primary materials about nineteenth-century womanhood, foreign travel, medicine, philosophy, theatre, and art—some of the topics that interested James as he was writing the story—this volume includes James’s ruminations on fiction, theatre, and writing, and presents excerpts of Daisy Miller as he rewrote it for the theatre and for a much later and heavily revised edition.

Download or read book The Coldest Winter written by Paula Fox and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2006-10-17 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this elegant and affecting companion to her "extraordinary" memoir, Borrowed Finery, a young writer flings herself into a Europe ravaged by the Second World War (The Boston Globe) In 1946, Paula Fox walked up the gangplank of a partly reconverted Liberty with the classic American hope of finding experience—or perhaps salvation—in Europe. She was twenty-two years old, and would spend the next year moving among the ruins of London, Warsaw, Paris, Prague, Madrid, and other cities as a stringer for a small British news service. In this lucid, affecting memoir, Fox describes her movements across Europe's scrambled borders: unplanned trips to empty castles and ruined cathedrals, a stint in bombed-out Warsaw in the midst of the Communist election takeovers, and nights spent in apartments here and there with distant relatives, friends of friends, and in shabby pensions with little heat, each place echoing with the horrors of the war. A young woman alone, with neither a plan nor a reliable paycheck, Fox made her way with the rest of Europe as the continent rebuilt and rediscovered itself among the ruins. Long revered as a novelist, Fox won over a new generation of readers with her previous memoir, Borrowed Finery. Now, with The Coldest Winter, she recounts another chapter of a life seemingly filled with stories—a rare, unsentimental glimpse of the world as seen by a writer at the beginning of an illustrious career.