Henry James' Last Romance: Making Sense of the Past and the American Scene

by Beverly Haviland

Overview

In this major new study of Henry James' classic text of cultural criticism, The American Scene, Beverly Haviland shows how James confronted the vexing problem of making sense of the past so that he could make culture work. In this record of his 1904-5 return to America and in his unfinished novels, The Sense of the Past and The Ivory Tower, he interpreted the social conflicts that seemed to be paralyzing relations between men and women, between black and white Americans, between "natives" and "aliens," between defenders of taste and censors of waste. Haviland's own method brings historical and theoretical readings into conversation with each other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521563383
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/28/1997
Series:	Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture , #110
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.83(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: at home: the reception of Henry James; Part I. Henry James's Last Romance: The Sense of the Past: 1. The sense of the present; 2. The sense of a happy ending; Part II. Civilization and its Contents: The American Scene: 3. Making signs of the past: interpretation and C. S. Peirce; 4. Waste makes taste: Classicism, conspicuous consumption, and Thorstein Veblen; 5. 'Psychic Mulattos': the ambiguity of race and W. E. B. Du Bois; 6. The return of the alien: Ethnic identity and Jakob A. Riis; Part III. Patrimony and Matrimony: The Ivory Tower: 7. Heterosocial acts: the ambiguity of gender in the New World; 8. Odd couples: Henry James Senior and Jacques Lacan; 9. Irony makes love: Mrs Henry James and Washington, AC/DC.

Editorial Reviews

"This contextualization of immigration establishes a new benchmark in interpreting James's sense of Americanness historically and expansively." Allan Hepburn, American Literature

From the Publisher