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Forms of Literary Relations in Henry James
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Forms of Literary Relations in Henry James

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787). This special issue belongs to the section "Literature in the Humanities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2020) | Viewed by 11936

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Simone Francescato

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ca’ Foscari University, 30123 Venice, Italy
Interests: late 19th- and early 20th-century American literary realism, and in particular the work of Henry James

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With his enduring achievement in both the art of fiction and the art of criticism, Henry James is perhaps the transatlantic author who has most convincingly showed that the web of literary relations stops nowhere. No one would dare deny that for such a voracious reader and estimator of American, British and continental literature, the question of literary relations is deeply entwined with the very essence of his creative output. Over the years, a number of influential critics have convincingly traced James’ works to a wider literary and cultural context, mostly within the English- and French-speaking traditions, to name just a few: Lyall Powers, Adeline Tintner, Pierre Walker, Jonathan Freedman, Angus Wrenn, and Philip Horne. However, literary relations can be said to take on multiple forms and meanings—as “influence,” “intertextuality,” “parody,” “allusion,” “imitation,” “emulation,” “rivalry” etc.—and attention should still be paid to the various ways in which they have been imagined, fictionalized, interpreted and used by the author himself and by his critics, also in the light of the development of comparative critical interpretation in James studies and the emergence of new autobiographical material in the last decades.

This Special Issue thus seeks contributions that possibly address any aspect of this theme. Topics might include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Definition(s) of “literary relation” as formulated by James;
  • Literary relations in James’s fiction;
  • James’ self-allusions in his fiction and non-fiction;
  • Literary phrases and sayings and critical terminology borrowed and/or reimagined;
  • Influences on James' style as a literary critic and as a correspondent;
  • James’ literary criticism—new perspectives on his reception of other authors;
  • James’ correspondence—his reception of authors as retrievable in his recently published letters;
  • Construction of other authors’ persona in his auto/biographical works.

Prof. Simone Francescato
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Henry James
  • literary relations
  • comparative critical interpretation
  • new autobiographical material

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 303 KiB  
Article
The Mystery of “Collaboration” in Henry James
by James Lello
Humanities 2021, 10(2), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10020069 - 13 Apr 2021
Viewed by 2414
Abstract
This article argues for the importance of collaboration as a species of literary relation in Henry James’s work. Collaboration was increasingly popular towards the end of the nineteenth century, and yet, James’s interest in and occasional practice of this compositional mode has been [...] Read more.
This article argues for the importance of collaboration as a species of literary relation in Henry James’s work. Collaboration was increasingly popular towards the end of the nineteenth century, and yet, James’s interest in and occasional practice of this compositional mode has been largely overlooked. This is partly due to James’s own ambivalent and contested relationship with multiple authorship, most obviously in his contribution to The Whole Family. However, James’s frequent identification of collaboration as a “mystery” indicates the extent to which it exerted a considerable influence over his imagination and thinking, and its association with some of his most formative moments of novelistic and vocational self-awareness. “Collaboration” is also a literary subject in its own right, most obviously in James’s 1892 story of that name, and the depiction of the practice as a unifying, if occasionally divisive, ideal offers a complex and often enigmatic vision of sociable reciprocity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forms of Literary Relations in Henry James)
14 pages, 286 KiB  
Article
An “Entirely Personal” Success: Intertextuality and Self-Reflexive Ironies in Henry James’s “Pandora”
by Sabrina Vellucci
Humanities 2021, 10(2), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10020061 - 29 Mar 2021
Viewed by 1857
Abstract
Henry James’s self-allusions in “Pandora” have been read as a rewriting of his former treatment of the “American Girl abroad” in the comic mode. The hints at “a Tauchnitz novel by an American author” (90) establish an ironical reversal of the failures of [...] Read more.
Henry James’s self-allusions in “Pandora” have been read as a rewriting of his former treatment of the “American Girl abroad” in the comic mode. The hints at “a Tauchnitz novel by an American author” (90) establish an ironical reversal of the failures of understanding which had led to tragedy in “Daisy Miller.” Yet the ironies in “Pandora” are multi-layered, often self-reflexive, and can be further interpreted in the light of James’s controversial adaptation of his famous novella for the stage. In this framework, well-known Jamesian topoi appear both as a (self-)parody and a metaliterary dialogue James engages with his readers and critics. The author’s personal implication in this “American” story is further testified by his Notebooks, in which James states his intention to write about his friends Henry and “Clover” Adams. Indeed, “Pandora”’s multi-layered intertextuality includes undeclared references to Adams’s anonymously published novel, Democracy, a semi-satirical account of U.S. political life. My article focuses on the web of intertextual relations woven in this short story with a view to reflecting on James’s ideas concerning the politics of authorship, readership, literary success, and the fate of the American Girl. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forms of Literary Relations in Henry James)
13 pages, 277 KiB  
Article
The International Dimension of “The Death of the Lion”
by Simone Francescato
Humanities 2021, 10(2), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10020060 - 26 Mar 2021
Viewed by 2310
Abstract
This essay reconsiders some critically established ‘germs’ for Henry James’s “The Death of the Lion” (1894), traced back to the 1893 demise of Guy de Maupassant and to the latter’s only visit to England in the summer of 1886. On that occasion, Maupassant [...] Read more.
This essay reconsiders some critically established ‘germs’ for Henry James’s “The Death of the Lion” (1894), traced back to the 1893 demise of Guy de Maupassant and to the latter’s only visit to England in the summer of 1886. On that occasion, Maupassant was ‘chaperoned’ by his American friend Blanche Roosevelt, a well-known literary journalist in the London and Paris circles. The unexplored connection with Roosevelt invites a new reading which gives prominence to the American woman character in the tale (Fanny Hurter) and unveils an international subtheme within it. In light of such a reading, as well as of authoritative studies which have analyzed “The Death of the Lion” against the rise of modern literary journalism, I will also re-examine the role of the first-person narrator, an unnamed ‘repented’ literary journalist, in thwarting the possible relation between Neil Paraday and his American admirer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forms of Literary Relations in Henry James)
12 pages, 256 KiB  
Article
Echoes of the Heart: Henry James’s Evocation of Edgar Allan Poe in “The Aspern Papers”
by Leonardo Buonomo
Humanities 2021, 10(1), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10010055 - 19 Mar 2021
Viewed by 2619
Abstract
This essay re-examines Henry James’s complex relationship with Edgar Allan Poe by focusing on the echoes of one of Poe’s most celebrated tales, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), that later reverberate in James’s “The Aspern Papers” (1888). It highlights the similarities, both in mindset [...] Read more.
This essay re-examines Henry James’s complex relationship with Edgar Allan Poe by focusing on the echoes of one of Poe’s most celebrated tales, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), that later reverberate in James’s “The Aspern Papers” (1888). It highlights the similarities, both in mindset and behavior, between the two stories’ devious and deranged first-person narrators, whose actions result in the death of a fellow human being. It further discusses the narrators’ fear and refusal of their own mortality, which finds expression in their hostility, and barely contained revulsion against a man (in “The Tell-Tale Heart”) and a woman (in “The Aspern Papers”), whose principal defining traits are old age and physical decay. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forms of Literary Relations in Henry James)
14 pages, 285 KiB  
Article
Henry James Reads Walter Scott Again
by Oliver Herford
Humanities 2021, 10(1), 39; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10010039 - 27 Feb 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1673
Abstract
This article reassesses Henry James’s attitude to the historical novels of Walter Scott in light of James’s observation, made early on in the First World War, that the current global situation “makes Walter Scott, him only, readable again”. Scott’s novels were strongly associated [...] Read more.
This article reassesses Henry James’s attitude to the historical novels of Walter Scott in light of James’s observation, made early on in the First World War, that the current global situation “makes Walter Scott, him only, readable again”. Scott’s novels were strongly associated for James with young readers and a juvenile, escapist mode of reading; and yet close attention to James’s comments on Scott in his criticism, notebooks and correspondence, and examination of a recurring image of children as readers and listeners to oral stories in the work of both authors, indicate that James engaged with Scott’s presentation of the historical and personal past more extensively and in more complex ways than have hitherto been suspected. Scott’s example as a novelist and editor notably informs James’s practice in several late works: the family memoir Notes of a Son and Brother (1914), the New York Edition of his novels and tales (1907–1909), and the unfinished, posthumously published novel The Sense of the Past (1917). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Forms of Literary Relations in Henry James)
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