Henry James

1
Henry Jamess Immense SensibilityTalking about
Consciousness in The Art of Fiction (1884) and
the Prefaces (1906-1908)

• Techniques of the Observer
• ENG 391W
• March 24, 2011

2
Anthony Trollopes betrayal

• A respected and prolific Victorian novelist
  (1815-1882)
• In a digressionhe Trollope concedes to the
  reader that he and this trusting friend are only
  making believe. He admits that the events he
  narrates have not really happened, and that he
  can give his narrative any turn the reader may
  like best. Such a betrayal of a sacred office
  seems to me, I confess, a terrible crime (The
  Art of Fiction 378).

3
Where does consciousness reside?

• 1897 James develops severe writers cramp and has
  to dictate his novels, stories, reviews, and
  critiques to an amanuensis (the first was William
  MacAlpine).
• At the same time, he begins to pose questions
  about the double phenomenon of consciousness
  that it resides in people but also between
  them.

4
Literary and Cultural Discussions of
Consciousness in the Late 19th Century

• 1870s and 1880s Charcots work on hysteria,
  hypnosis and dual personality
• 1882 the founding of the Society for Psychical
  Research
• 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson publishes Dr. Jekyll
  and Mr. Hyde
• 1890 William James publishes The Principles of
  Psychology

5
The Function of the Prefaces

• A plea for Criticism, for Discrimination, for
  Appreciation
• A reference guide to the technical aspects of the
  art of fiction
• A place to psychologize the idea of
  consciousness by imagining it as centered,
  subjective, internal, and unitary. The prefaces
  stabilize a connection between consciousness and
  the self by asserting that the self is where
  consciousness resides. The representations of
  consciousness in the novels contradict that
  placementIn the novels consciousness is not
  stable, not subjective, not interior, not
  unitary, as Jamess Prefaces claim. But it is
  also, as a consequence, not dismissed or
  deconstructed. Rather it is disseminated. In the
  novels consciousness is not in persons it is
  rather between them (Cameron 77)
• Cameron, Sharon. Thinking in Henry James.
  (Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1989), 77.

6
A.L. Coburns Frontispieces to Jamess New York
Edition

• The series of frontispieces contribute less to
  ornament, I recognize, than if Mr. Alvin Langdon
  Coburns beautiful photographs, which they
  reproduce, had had to suffer less reduction but
  of those that have suffered least the beauty, to
  my sense, remains great
• Alvin Langdon Coburn Henry James (in Rye, NY)
• Self-Portrait with Copper Press,
  1908 Photogravure, 1906
• Image courtesy George Eastman House, Image
  courtesy of
• International Museum of Photography and Film
  www.photgravure.com

7
Jamess Struggle with Picture-Books A
Competitive Process

• The essence of any representational work is of
  course to bristle with immediate images and I,
  for one, should have looked much askance at the
  proposalto graft or grow, at whatever point, a
  picture by another hand on my own picture this
  being always, to my sense, a lawless incident
  (Preface to The Golden Bowl, 331-332 in the
  Blakmur edition)
• See pages 331-333

8
The Act of Revision

• To revise is to see, or to look over, againthe
  act of revision, the act of seeing the writing
  again, caused whatever I looked at on any page to
  flower before me as into the only terms that
  honourably expressed it.The taste of the poet
  i.e. the writer is his active sense of
  life in accordance with which truth to keep
  ones hand on it is to hold the silver clue to
  the whole labyrinth of his consciousness
  (Preface to The Golden Bowl, 338, 339, 340).
• In what way does this 1909 preface carry on the
  conversion James began in The Art of Fiction
  twenty five years earlier?