An intelligently organized, painstakingly annotated gleaning of
Henry James' critical writings, brought together in this form for
the first time. (Leon Edel collected all of the critical writings
into two volumes in 1984,) Included here are James' studies of
Hawthorne, George Eliot, Balzac, Zola, de Maupassant, Turgenev,
Sainte-Beuve and Matthew Arnold; a selection of nine Prefaces from
the New York edition of James' works, plus his essays on the
function of criticism and the future of the novel. Together, they
offer a well-chosen overview of the master's 50-year-long career as
probably the finest, most perceptive literary critic of the 19th
century. James' critical models were Sainte-Beuve and Arnold and
"disinterestedness" was the ideal he sought in his literary
reviews, biographies and appreciations. The critic, he felt, must
be somehow "in-between,' part-philosopher/part-historian;
part-scholar/part-man of the world; part-masculine/part-feminine.
"Axe-grinding" was not one of the critic's functions. Instead, it
was "to compare a work with itself, with its own concrete standard
of truth," as he wrote in 1865. This quality is perhaps best shown
in his essay on Zola. Here James manages to treat objectively a
writer whose personal integrity he admired enormously but whose
vision of the world repelled him. It's a tour de force that many
modern critics would do well to emulate. The editors divide their
selections into the four periods of James' creative life: as
practical critic, as theoretician, as self-critic in "The Prefaces"
and as retrospective analyst. Except for the book-length Hawthorne,
all the essays are reproduced in their entirety. Commentaries and
notes place each of the selections in context of James' oeuvre,
citing passages from works not included in the present edition. A
superb bibliography and an equally thorough index round out the
anthology. For anyone interested in the art of criticism in
general, and James' contribution to the form in particular, this
will serve as an indispensable reference work for years to come.
(Kirkus Reviews)
In The Art of Criticism, William Veeder and Susan M. Griffin have
brought together for the first time the best of the Master's
critical work: the most important of his Prefaces, which R. P.
Blackmur has called the most sustained and I think the most
eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence; his
studies of Hawthorne, George Eliot, Balzac, Zola, de Maupassant,
Turgenev, Sante-Beuve, and Arnold; and his essays on the function
of criticism and the future of the novel.
The editors have provided what James himself emphasized in his
literary criticism--the text's context. Each selection is framed by
an editorial commentary and notes which give its biographical,
bibliographical, and critical background and cite other references
in James' work to the topic discussed. This framework, along with
the editors' introduction, gives the reader a sense of the place of
these pieces in the history of criticism.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
