The Catholic Side of Henry James

by Edwin Sill Fussell

Overview

The Catholic Side of Henry James is the first to reveal the profound Catholic imagery in James' work. Edwin Fussell argues that Henry James, though not a "card-carrying" Catholic, was a fellow-traveling Catholic of a certain literary type. Fussell is not trying to turn James into a Closet Catholic but is, rather, intent on questioning conventional critical assumptions about James' unquestioned secularity. He contends that the writer's career began with narratives of Catholic conversion and ended with his masterpiece of Catholic eccentricity and alienation, The Golden Bowl. With an enormously detailed knowledge of James' novels, tales, letters, and journals, Fussell convincingly demonstrates the extent of the writer's involvement with the ideas of Catholicism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521432023
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/30/1993
Series:	Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture , #61
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Calendar: chief items of Catholic interest in Henry James; Documentation; Part I. Bibliographical Leads, Historical Considerations; Part II. Representing Catholicity: 1. The Protestant base; 2. Liberalism; 3. The picturesque; 4. The question of religious audience; 5. Sacred seculars in the tales; 6. Sacred seculars: novel, letter, and notebook; 7. Death and literary form; Part III. The Narratives of Catholic Conversion: 1. Watch and Ward (1871); 2. Italian sketches and Italian tales (1870–5); 3. Roderick Hudson (1875); 4. The American (1876–7); 5. Attenuations: The Reverberator (1888); 6. Supersubtlety one: What Maisie Knew (1897); 7. Supersubtlety two: The Turn of the Screw (1898); Part IV. Pas de quatre: 1. Catholicity neat: 'Gabrielle de Bergerac' (1869); 2. Secularizing Catholicity: 'The Altar of the Dead' (1895); 3. Protestantizing Catholicity: 'The Great Good Place' (1900); 4. Satirizing secularity: 'The Birthplace (1903); Part V. The Catholic Ménage as Literary Space: 1. 'De Grey: A Romance' (1868); 2. Guy Domville (1893, 1895); 3. The Golden Bowl (1904): the crown of his career; Part VI. 'Prove that I'm Not!' - Toward the Impossibility of Interpretation; Notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Fussell's own style is Jamesian in wit and perceptiveness." Ronda Chervin, New Oxford Review

"I am grateful to Fussell, one of our most subtle readers of American literature, for his close reading of the Catholic elements. Fussell does not believe that James embraced Catholicism, but he does demonstrate in a careful manner the 'fascination' the religion held for him." Irving Malin, The Henry James Review

"The Catholic Side of Henry James, although quirky, extends our own tolerance for the mysteries embedded in James's cultural quest as well as for hermeneutic criticism of this sort, which bravely attempts to solve those mysteries—and sometimes creates new ones in the process." Peter Bien, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920

"...one of the most thought-provoking aspects of Fussell's perceptive and knowledgeable book is the way it implicitly interrogates time-honored affiliates between American fiction and the great good places of Protestant self-reliance and freedom." Paul Giles, Nineteenth-Century Literature

"The Catholic Side of Henry James is a significant contribution to the field of James Studies." Religion and the Arts

From the Publisher