Learn about Henry Jamess influences that helped shape What Maisie Knew, and other important details about Henry. The chapter closes with a discussion of the theoretical perspectives critics have brought to the novel, from its canonisation by the formalists to recent discussions of its colonial implications. Detailed Author Biography of Henry James. Finally, the shift from authorial to figural narration in the course of the novel foreshadows the loss of epistemological certainty that would preoccupy novelists throughout the twentieth century. IN THE ART OF FICTION (1884), AN ESSAY WRITTEN a few years before his ill-fated attempt to start a new career as a playwright. It traces the intellectual growth of its protagonist, Maisie, who under these circumstances comes to embody the modernist relational self. This essay deals with the novel What Maisie knew (first published in 1897) which is one of the less known and less studied novels written by Henry James. It depicts fin-de-siècle London as a world of ever-shifting alliances in which even family bonds are dissolved into temporary arrangements. What Maisie Knew negotiates this shift on several levels. Following a brief introduction to James’s life and oeuvre, the chapter discusses the turn of the twentieth century as a time in which knowledge and identity were reconceived as relational, temporary constructs. The chapter positions What Maisie Knew as a pivotal text in the turn from the Victorian to the modernist novel.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |