The Art of Fiction - Henry James

Question 1

Context

Answer 1

• published in 1884
• its an enquiry into the defence of the novelist craft.
• written as a response to Walter Besant’s “laws of fiction” with humble respect.

Question 2

rhetorical strategies

Answer 2

• adopts a voice of timidity: is respectful to besant, giving example of his ideas, whilst also introducing his own aesthetic counter argument
• witty and playful verbal performance: eg. the courtesan etc
• uses interesting and insightful analogies (between novels and paintings) and also interesting metaphors (such as literature being a “huge spider-web of experience”).
• engages with the reader by inviting them to reflect on implications of his claims: E.g he states how the “deeper qualities” of a rank of at reflects the “mind of the producer”. He then asks the reader to consider when and how one recognises that they have “made contact” with the producer.
• use of double analogy: “as the picture is reality, so the novel is history”.
• playfully deconstructs pensant’s argument by writing with experience. “impressions are experience”

Question 3

His argument

Answer 3

• a novel should “represent life” and have an “air of reality”. E.g admires Anne Thackeray’s realistic depiction of a french protestant youth. experience not totally necessary, but more grasp a “personal, direct impression of life”.
• says how the novelist should speak with the “tone of the historian” (contrast to earlier critics who deemed it above history, like sidney.)
• “impressions ARE experience”
• he attacks the very foundation of English criticism, focused on moral stories and happy endings, by stating they should only have to be personal and interesting.

Question 4

Objective and subjective

Answer 4

• slightly paradoxical. after saying a novel should be “interesting”, he then claims that “a novel is history”
• goes from it being an objective “historical” truth, to being subjective “personal, direct impression of life”
• ultimately conjoined the two by calling for artistic subjectivity with a sense of the novels objective responsibilities.