Decadence in the Late Novels of Henry James

242 Pages·2007·1.406 MB·English

by  Anna Kventsel (auth.)

Decadence in the Late Novels of Henry James
Decadence in the Late
Novels of Henry James
Anna Kventsel
© Anna Kventsel 2007
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-0-230-00827-4
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
To my parents
Life’s self is nourished by its proper pith,
And we are nurtured like a Pelican brood.
John Keats, Endymion
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
List of Abbreviations ix
1. Introduction 1
2. ‘The Historic Muse’: On The Ambassadors 26
3. ‘The Adventure of Shipwreck’: On The Wings of the Dove 57
4. ‘The Passions of Princes’: On The Golden Bowl 135
5. Afterword 207
Notes 211
Works Cited 219
Index 224
vii
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Rothschild Foundation and the Fulbright Foundation
in Israel; the period of research abroad they funded brought this work to
fruition.
To my colleagues in the English Department of the Hebrew
University. Special thanks to Leona Toker, Elizabeth Freund, Eynel
Wardi, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan and Moshe Ron.
To Ruth Bernard Yeazell from Yale University and to Margaret Cone
from Darwin College, Cambridge, for their good will as hosts at their
institutions.
To Orit Sen Gupta, a master of yoga whose teaching reveals itself not
least in matters of writing.
To Helen Craine and Christabel Scaife at Palgrave Macmillan and the
staff of Macmillan India, for their ever-prompt and friendly expertise.
To the reader for Palgrave Macmillan, for his heartening review.
To Adrian Poole, who read and commented on various drafts, with
great patience and a wonderful keenness of insight.
Above all, to John Landau and Baruch Hochman. Without their sus-
taining presence in my academic life from its earliest days, this project
would not have been undertaken, much less completed. Baruch’s
invaluable skill in editing helped recast the ‘loose and baggy monster’ I
had produced in its present trimmer, more amenable form.
viii
List of Abbreviations
A The Ambassadors (James 1986)
AA The Awkward Age (James 1987)
Ab Autobiography(James 1956)
AB Agnolo Bronzino(McComb 1928)
AHJ The American Henry James(Anderson 1957)
AN Aspects of the Novel(Forster 1990)
AS The American Scene(James 1993)
BC The Birth of the Clinic(Foucault 1973)
BV The Breaking of the Vessels(Bloom 1982)
CHAN Cultural History of the American Novel(Minter 1994)
CM Cuire le Monde(Malamoud 1989)
CP The Civilizing Process (Elias 1978)
CT The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer 1987)
CWO A Crown of Wild Olive(Ruskin 1866)
D A Writer’s Diary(Woolf 1954)
DFRE The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(Gibbon 1960)
DHJ Death in Henry James (Cutting 2005)
DL Desire and Love in Henry James (McWhirter 1989)
EA Elegy for an Age(Rosenberg 2005)
EV The Expense of Vision(Holland 1964)
FP False Positions(Rivkin 1996)
FR The French Revolution(Carlyle 1980)
FT The Finer Tone(Wasserman 1953)
GB The Golden Bowl(James 1987)
GT The Great Tradition(Leavis 1962)
HAHJ Henry Adams and Henry James(Rowe 1976)
HJ Henry James(Poole 1991)
HJCP Henry James and the Culture of Publicity(Salmon 1997)
HJL Henry James: A Life(Edel 1977)
HJLE Henry James and the Lust of the Eyes(Tintner 1993)
HJPA Henry James’s Permanent Adolescence(Bradley 1999)
HJHED Henry James and Homo-Erotic Desire(Bradley 1999)
ID ‘On the Imagination of Death’ (Hochman 1975)
IH Italian Hours(James 1968)
IM Illness as Metaphor(Sontag 1978)
IRS ‘Is the Rectum Straight?’ (Sedgwick 1993)
ix
x List of Abbreviations
IT ‘Introduction to The Tempest’ (James 1968)
IW Invalid Women(Herndl Price 1993)
JF The James Family (Matthiessen 1980)
JSRE James and the Shadow of the Roman Empire(Poole 1997)
L Letters(James 1974–84)
LB Lucrezia Borgia(Gregorovius 1948)
LC I Literary Criticism: Essays on Literature, American Writers,
English Writers (James 1984)
LC II Literary Criticism: French Writers, Other European Writers,
The Prefaces to the New York Edition(James 1984)
LE Literary Essays of Ezra Pound(Pound 1954)
LK Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James
(Yeazell 1976)
MF The Marble Faun (Hawthorne 1961)
MP Henry James: The Major Phase(Matthiessen 1963)
MSMC Mont Saint Michel and Chartres(Adams 1986)
N The Complete Notebooks(James 1987)
NER The Norbert Elias Reader (Elias 1998)
NHJ The Novels of Henry James(Cargill 1961)
NS Natural Supernaturalism(Abrams 1971)
OC The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James(Krook 1962)
PL A Private Life of Henry James(Gordon 1998)
PP The Principles of Psychology(James 1981)
PR Playing and Reality(Winnicott 1971)
R The Renaissance(Pater 1980)
RO Rage for Order(Warren 1948)
SA Sincerity and Authenticity(Trilling 1972)
SB Seeing and Being(Porter 1981)
SF The Sacred Fount(James 1994)
SFII Somatic Fictions(Vrettos 1995)
SLJK The Selected Letters of John Keats(Keats 1951)
SM The Statesman’s Manual(Coleridge 1986)
SR Sartor Resartus(Carlyle1937)
T Tragedy(Poole 2005)
TC The Trial of Curiosity(Posnock 1991)
TD A Thing Divided(Landau 1996)
TIT ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (Eliot 1994)
TM The Tragedy of Manners (Crews 1957)
VRE The Varieties of Religious Experience(James 1985)
WD The Wings of the Dove(James 1986)
WMA The Waning of the Middle Ages(Huizinga 1990)