Telling in Henry James: The Web of Experience and the Forms of Reality

Description

Telling in Henry James argues that James's contribution to narrative and narrative theories is a lifelong exploration of how to "tell," but not, as Douglas has it in "The Turn of the Screw" in any "literal, vulgar way." James's fiction offers multiple, and often contradictory, reading (in)directions. Zwinger's overarching contention is that the telling detail is that which cannot be accounted for with any single critical or theoretical lens-that reading James is in some real sense a reading of the disquietingly inassimilable "fictional machinery." The analyses offered by each of the six chapters are grounded in close reading and focused on oddments-textual equivalents to the “particles” James describes as caught in a silken spider web, in a famous analogy used in “The Art of Fiction” to describe the kind of “consciousness” James wants his fiction to present to the reader. Telling in Henry James attends to the sheer fun of James's wit and verbal dexterity, to the cognitive tune-up offered by the complexities and nuances of his precise and rhythmic syntax, and to the complex and contradictory contrapuntal impact of the language on the page, tongue, and ear. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1 Henry James on Telling Chapter 2 The Europeans in the House of Fiction: “a foreigner of some sort” The Little Chalet on the Prairie Playing havoc with the foreground Chapter 3 Morganizing the Body of “The Pupil” The perfect unconscious Henry James was queer and did not do it “The strange fact of there being nothing to speak of the matter . . .” Chapter 4 The Silver Clue Fish in The Golden Bowl Chapter 5 In the Vestibule of “The Jolly Corner” Mommy! I’m home . . . “I was to have known myself”: I as trope l’oeil Mommy, I’m home (Vol. 2) Chapter 6 Telling on Henry James Trollope Works Cited Index