Henry James and the Writing of Race and Nation

by Sara Blair

Overview

In this study, Blair challenges Henry James' perceived status as the literary figurehead of an impregnable high culture. Emphasizing James' engagement in forms of popular culture (including ethnography, minstrelsy, photography, and journalism), Blair traces the ways in which his writing, steeped in these forms, acted as a force in the forging of racial, national, and cultural identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521497503
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/26/1996
Series:	Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture , #99
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.75(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: making a difference: Henry James, literary culture, and racial theater; 1. First impressions: 'Questions of Ethnography' and the art of travel; 2. 'Preparation for culture': Anthony Trollope, the American Century, and the fiction of freedom; 3. 'Trying to be Natural': authorship and the power of type in The Princess Casamassima; 4. James, Jack the Ripper, and the cosmopolitan Jew: staging authorship in The Tragic Muse; 5. Documenting the alien: racial theater in The American Scene.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"There is much to praise in Blair's book: her mastery of the relevant scholarship, her illuminating, often brilliant, analyses of individual texts, her wide-ranging insight into the events, places, institutions, and ideas that engaged James's mind to become the experience he transformed into art." Elsa Nettels, The Henry James Review

"This book is an important contribution to the continuing debates about James's place in literature and about the place of high art in the development of any culture at all." Choice

"...Henry James and the Writing of Race and Nation manifests many of the strengths ofmodern-day criticism...." Jim Barloon, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

"This excellent study of Henry James marks an important turn in the scholarship of American literature, one that provokes reflection on why it has taken so long to read James through the precarious constitution of racial and national identities. ...Blair candidly describes how competing critical imperatives have enriched her approach.... The reader cannot help but notice how gracefully her writing flows...." The New England Quarterly

Editorial Reviews

"There is much to praise in Blair's book: her mastery of the relevant scholarship, her illuminating, often brilliant, analyses of individual texts, her wide-ranging insight into the events, places, institutions, and ideas that engaged James's mind to become the experience he transformed into art." Elsa Nettels, The Henry James Review

"This book is an important contribution to the continuing debates about James's place in literature and about the place of high art in the development of any culture at all." Choice

"...Henry James and the Writing of Race and Nation manifests many of the strengths ofmodern-day criticism...." Jim Barloon, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920

"This excellent study of Henry James marks an important turn in the scholarship of American literature, one that provokes reflection on why it has taken so long to read James through the precarious constitution of racial and national identities. ...Blair candidly describes how competing critical imperatives have enriched her approach.... The reader cannot help but notice how gracefully her writing flows...." The New England Quarterly

From the Publisher