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1 Early Twentieth-Century Fiction e20fic14.blogs.rutgers.edu Prof. Andrew Goldstone (Murray 019, Mondays 2:30 4:30) CA: Evan Dresman (36 Union St. 217, Wednesdays 12:00 2:00) September 11, James, The Jolly Corner.

2 for Monday Woolf, Bürger, and Casanova on Sakai only one commonplace entry required by Sunday evening if you do more, make separate posts for each passage you choose (so you can tag each independently)

3 review James: standards for the art of fiction the very idea professionalism realism: really to represent life (mimesis, observation) Wilde: against realism life is boring aestheticism ( the very condition of any art is style ) artistic practice as fully independent ( no history but its own ) James and Wilde: autonomy freedom technique questions of morality are quite another affair

4 style (1) Everyone asks me what I think of everything, said Spencer Brydon; and I make answer as I can begging or dodging the question, putting them off with any nonsense. It wouldn t matter to any of them really, he went on, for, even were it possible to meet in that stand-and-deliver way so silly a demand on so big a subject, my thoughts would still be almost altogether about something that concerns only myself.

5 style (1) Everyone asks me what I think of everything, said Spencer Brydon; and I make answer as I can begging or dodging the question, putting them off with any nonsense. It wouldn t matter to any of them really, he went on, for, even were it possible to meet in that stand-and-deliver way so silly a demand on so big a subject, my thoughts would still be almost altogether about something that concerns only myself. this comfort and support having promptly enough taken the first place in the considerable array of surprises attending his so strangely belated return to America. (491)

6 style (2) If he knew the way to it now better than to any other address among the dreadful multiplied numberings which seemed to him to reduce the whole place if he had formed that habit it was really not a little because of the charm of his having encountered and recognized breaking through the mere gross generalisation a small still scene where items and shades kept the sharpness and where economy hung about like the scent of a garden. (493 94)

7 style (3) the delayed specification of referents (Ian Watt, The First Paragraph of The Ambassadors, Essays in Criticism 10, no. 3 [July 1960]: 255)

8 style (3) the delayed specification of referents (Ian Watt, The First Paragraph of The Ambassadors, Essays in Criticism 10, no. 3 [July 1960]: 255) Discussion Find another example of the delayed specification of referents (sentence or paragraph-level). Analyze how it creates delay. Then consider the significance of this delay.

9 style (4) He could cultivate his whole perception. He had felt it as above all open to cultivation which indeed was but another name for his manner of spending his time. He was bringing it on, bringing it to perfection, by practice; in consequence of which it had grown so fine that he was now aware of impressions, attestations of his general postulate, that couldn t have broken upon him at once. (507)

10 style (4) He could cultivate his whole perception. He had felt it as above all open to cultivation which indeed was but another name for his manner of spending his time. He was bringing it on, bringing it to perfection, by practice; in consequence of which it had grown so fine that he was now aware of impressions, attestations of his general postulate, that couldn t have broken upon him at once. (507) To think, Brydon knew, as he stood there, was, with the lapsing moments, not to have acted! (512) I ll tell you some other time! (503)

11 all the old baffled forsworn possibilities I ve followed strange paths and worshipped strange gods; it must have come to you again and again that I was leading, at any time these thirty years, a selfish frivolous scandalous life. (501) Don t you see how, without my exile, I shouldn t have been waiting till now? But he pulled up for the strange pang. (502)

12 strange paths 1843 born New York in wealthy family raised Paris, London, Geneva goes to law school, doesn t finish invalid, doesn t fight in Civil War 1875 in Paris, crucial year 1876 moves permanently to London (UK citizen 1915) 1878 Daisy Miller makes him famous in US and UK 1895 disastrous attempt at drama 1900 Major Phase (so called by F.O. Matthiessen) deluxe revised New York Edition of his work 1908 The Jolly Corner in Ford Madox Ford s English Review 1916 dies

13 exile I have not the least hesitation in saying that I aspire to write in such a way that it would be impossible to an outsider to say whether I am, at a given moment, an American writing about England or an Englishman writing about America and so far from being ashamed of such an ambiguity I should be exceedingly proud of it, for it would be highly civilized. (HJ to William James, 1888)

14 ambiguities Discussion What is haunting Brydon and why? Pay careful attention to the language of the climactic scene (519). Pay no attention to psychological ideas you cannot support from the text.

15 modernity from outside? The differences, the newnesses, the queernesses, above all the bignesses He saw that actually he had allowed for nothing; he missed what he would have been sure of finding, he found what he would never have imagined. Proportions and values were upside-down the swagger things, the modern, the monstrous, the famous things were exactly his sources of dismay. ( ) Such an identity fitted his at no point, made its alternative monstrous. The face was the face of a stranger. for the stranger, whoever he might be, evil, odious, blatant, vulgar, had advanced as for aggression, and he knew himself give ground. (519) It s only a question of what fantastic, yet perfectly possible, development of my own nature I mayn t have missed. (501)

16 gaining interest [Alice:] I had accepted him.before, for the interest of his difference yes. (525) [Brydon s state was] that of a man who has gone to sleep on some news of a great inheritance, and then, after dreaming it away, after profaning it with matters strange to it, has waked up again to serenity of certitude and has only to lie and watch it grow. (521)

17 gaining interest [Alice:] I had accepted him.before, for the interest of his difference yes. (525) [Brydon s state was] that of a man who has gone to sleep on some news of a great inheritance, and then, after dreaming it away, after profaning it with matters strange to it, has waked up again to serenity of certitude and has only to lie and watch it grow. (521) The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting. ( Art of Fiction, 577)

18 next What is the modern? read Bürger, Woolf, and Casanova commonplace from one of them

Early Twentieth-Century Fiction e20fic14.blogs.rutgers.edu

Early Twentieth-Century Fiction e20fic14.blogs.rutgers.edu Prof. Andrew Goldstone (andrew.goldstone@rutgers.edu) (Murray 019, Mondays 2:30 4:30) CA: Evan Dresman (evan.dresman@rutgers.edu) (36 Union St.