28.11.12

Classics of American Literature

Lecture 42-47

Topics for Further Consideration: (lecture 44)

1. Identify some of the technical innovations that Henry James brings to the art of the novel.

Henry James is often celebrated for elaborating the relation between the novel's form and authorial consciousness, but seldom for his equally strong sense of the intimate relation between the novel's form and history. Speaking of "The Future of the Novel" James invoked history as the guarantor of continual formal innovation. James is uncharacteristically forthright and emphatic. The novel's "own soul" follows the "queer and uncanny" formal innovations that keep pace with the "future of the society that produces and consumes it." Anything less, any assertion that the novel's "face has been, once and for all, turned in one direction," is "stupid." While the bulk of James' criticism most visibly explores abstract and purely formal dimensions of compositional unity, this exploration rests upon an assumption that the relation of form to history is implicit in the very act of writing. The "question" for James is whether a novel's "picture, of one's language and of one's time" is any good; if it is good, the novelist will have risen to the "difficult task" of the historical genre. A conviction of the novel's special, distinguishing relation to history informs James' theoretical speculations without occupying their visible center.

2. Summarize the questions that The Turn of the Screw raises about both "reader suspicion" and the "ethics" of reading.

The Turn of the Screw is a classic ghost story written in the 19th century. Speculation concerning the subjective believability and objective truth of the events in The Turn of the Screw depends upon the reader's acceptance or rejection of the governess's reliability as a narrator. It is this question which, until the early 1960s, divided critical interpretation of the novella. Deriving from this critical polarity, the debate concerning the novella has focused on three main issues: the reality of the ghosts, the sanity of the governess, and the corruption of the children. According to the apparitionist reading, the ghosts are real, the governess is a rational and plausible narrator, and the children, according to the majority of apparitionist critics, are to some degree corrupted by the ghosts. Due to its relative accessibility and popularity compared to much of James's other work, the novella is often read as an introduction to James. In addition, this tale of mystery—a term James invested with new meaning—is among the classics of Victorian Gothic fiction and has inspired notable adaptations in other media, including opera and film. Considered among James's greatest achievements, The Turn of the Screw continues to be admired as one of the most artistic and enigmatic works in literature.

Topics for Further Consideration: (lecture 47)

1. Explain how Crane challenged received notions about war in The Red Badge of Courage.

Although Crane was born after the war, and had not at the time experienced battle first-hand, the novel is known for its realism. He began writing what would become his second novel, using various contemporary and written accounts as inspiration. It is believed that he based the fictional battle on that of Chancellorsville; he may also have interviewed veterans of the 124th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commonly known as the Orange Blossoms. Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage without any experience of war. Nevertheless, the realistic portrayal of the battlefield in The Red Badge of Courage has often misled readers into thinking that Crane was himself a veteran. While trying to explain his ability to write about battle realistically, Crane stated: "Of course, I have never been in a battle, but I believe that I got my sense of the rage of conflict on the football field, or else fighting is a hereditary instinct, and I wrote intuitively; for the Cranes were a family of fighters in the old days". Crane drew from a variety of sources in order to realistically depict battle. Century's "Battles and Leaders" series served as direct inspiration for the novel, and one story in particular—Warren Lee Goss's "Recollections of a Private"—contains many parallels to Crane's work.

2. Both "The Open Boat" and "The Blue Hotel" are made up of explosive contests in which human beings either confront or release great violence. Explain how the two stories differ.

Stephen Crane, the author of "The Open Boat" and "The Blue Hotel," uses the theme of the subtle brother hood of man in each story. The characters in each story are stranded, one group in the ocean, and the other in a blizzard. Forced into close proximity of each other, their actions reveal how being isolated together causes men to form bonds, which instill a sense of brotherhood. The sense of brotherhood and the bond that is formed out of necessity is depicted in "The Open Boat" and "The Blue Hotel." The setting of each short story causes the men to be isolated, and it is necessary for them to come together and help each other in order to survive. "The Open Boat" is based on Crane's experience as a correspondent shipwrecked while on a filibustering expedition to the Cuban revolutionaries. The Naturalistic story pits a handful of men against the power of the indifferent but destructive sea. Crane's characteristic use of vivid imagery is demonstrated throughout this story to underscore both the beauty and terror of natural forces. "The Open Boat" raises deeply philosophical issues and is rife with symbolism. Crane's facility with imagery is again displayed with telling effect in the tragic story "The Blue Hotel." In this deceptively simple Western tale, "the Swede," one of Crane's most interesting characters, becomes the inevitable victim of his own preconceptions about the "Wild West"—fearing a lawless, uncivilized world, his violent reactions to Western life result in his own death. Crane's poetry is thought to have been a precursor to the Imagist movement, and his short fiction has also left an impression on American literature. The Open Boat and The Blue Hotel are all highly anthologized and considered to be masterworks.

American Passages Unit 7 (см. 21.11.12)