The Crisis of Action in Nineteenth-Century English Literature

WHEN WE SPEAK IN EVERYDAY conversation about the imagination, we often attribute to it powers that are greater than ordinary sensation. But when we are asked to perform the concrete experiment of comparing an imagined object with a perceptual one-that is, of actually stopping, closing our eyes, concentrating on the imagined face or the imagined room, then opening our eyes and comparing its attributes to whatever greets us when we return to the sensory world-we at once reach the opposite conclusion: the imagined object lacks the vitality and vivacity of the perceived; it is in fact these very attributes of vitality and vivacity that enable us to differentiate the actual world present to our senses from the one that we introduce through the exercise of the imagination. Even if, as Jean-Paul Sartre observes, the object we select to imagine in this experiment is the face of a beloved friend, one we know in intricate detail (as Sartre knew the faces of Annie and Pierre), it will be, by comparison with an actually present face, "thin," "dry," "two-dimensional," and "'inert."' It seems that we tend to notice this phenomenon only when we are especially keen on seeing a face, only when we desperately care to have it present in the mind with clarity and force. We then notice the deficiency and, like Proust's Marcel, who berates himself for his inability to picture the face of Albertine or the face of his grandmother, we conclude that the vacuity of our imagining is somehow peculiar to our feeling about this particular person and that there must be a hidden defect in our affection. In fact the vacuity is general, and all that is peculiar or particular to such cases is the intensity of "wishing to imagine" that makes us confront, with more than usual honesty, the fact that we cannot do so. It is when we are soaked with the longing to imagine that we notice, as John Keats confessed, "the fancy cannot cheat so well/As she is fam'd to do."2 By means of the vividness of perceptions, we remain at all moments capable of recovering, of "recognizing" the material world and distinguishing it from our imaginary world, even as we lapse into and out of our gray and ghostly daydreams. Aristotle refers to this grayness as "the feebleness" of images. Sartre calls it their "essential poverty." Of course, insofar as the imagination is enfeebled and impoverished, it is so only on sensory grounds. To complain that the imagined object lacks vivacity and

On Vivacity: The Difference between Daydreaming and Imagining-Under-Authorial-Instruction

Between the Civil War and the First World War, realism was the most prominent form of American fiction. Realist writers of the period include some of America's greatest, such as Henry James, Edith Wharton and Mark Twain, but also many lesser-known writers whose work still speaks to us today, for instance Charles Chesnutt, Zitkala-Sa and Sarah Orne Jewett. Emphasizing realism's historical context, this introduction traces the genre's relationship with powerful, often violent, social conflicts involving race, gender, class and national origin. It also examines how the realist style was created; the necessarily ambiguous relationship between realism produced on the page and reality outside the book; and the different, often contradictory, forms 'realism' took in literary works by different authors. The most accessible yet sophisticated account of American literary realism currently available, this volume will be of great value to students, teachers and readers of the American novel.

The Cambridge Introduction to American Literary Realism

https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6899&context=etd

War in the margins: illustrating anti-imperialism in American culture

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

Psychoanalytic criticism of the life and works of Henry James

The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James

Documents of Modern Literary Realism

Popular Fiction 100 Years Ago

A Century of George Eliot Criticism

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The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James

Documents of Modern Literary Realism

Popular Fiction 100 Years Ago

A Century of George Eliot Criticism