1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780243903321

Autore

Meissner Collin

Titolo

Henry James and the language of experience / / Collin Meissner [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 1999

ISBN

1-107-11510-8

0-511-00713-2

1-280-16180-9

0-511-11695-0

0-511-14977-8

0-511-30298-3

0-511-48519-0

0-511-05073-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (ix, 237 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

813/.4

Soggetti

Language and languages - Political aspects

Aesthetics - Political aspects

Consciousness in literature

Experience in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 228-232) and index.

Nota di contenuto

The experience of Jamesian hermeneutics -- The experience of divestiture: toward an understanding of the self in The American -- Bondage and boundaries: Isabel Archer's failed experience -- Lambert Strether and the negativity of experience -- Recovery and revelation: the experience of self-exposure in James's autobiography.

Sommario/riassunto

In Henry James and the Language of Experience, Collin Meissner examines the political dimension to the representation of experience as it unfolds throughout James's work. Meissner argues that, for James, experience was a private and public event, a dialectical process  that registered and expressed his consciousness of the external world. Adapting recent work in hermeneutics and phenomenology, Meissner shows how James's understanding of the process of consciousness is



not simply an aspect of literary form; it is in fact inherently political, as it requires an active engagement with the full complexity of social reality. For James, the civic value of art resided in this interactive process, one in which the reader becomes aware of the aesthetic experience as immediate and engaged. This wide-ranging study combines literary theory and close readings of James's work to argue for a redefinition of the aesthetic as it operates in James's work.