Thesis (M.A. in English)--Vanderbilt University, Aug. 2006. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation defines and analyzes the primary attributes of a new sub-genre of contemporary fiction: the Henry James novelization. Novels by Colm Tóibín, Cynthia Ozick and Alan Hollinghurst, among dozens of others, turn James into a fictional protagonist, while drawing upon his distinctive literary style, treatment of human psychology, and personal history. James as represented in these fictions is secretive, cripplingly self-aware and obsessed with others' opinions. Above all, he is preoccupied with controlling narratives. Because these works combine biographical and thematic approaches, the Jamesian author-protagonist displays aspects of James's own life, while sharing attributes of his own fictional creations. Thus a principal character type in these works is the addictive personality, as authors like Tóibín invoke the history of alcoholism in the James family, as well as the manipulative yet self-divided creations for which James was famous. The Introduction traces the literary representation of historical authors from the Greek epic through the postmodern novel and explains why Henry James is such an attractive subject for novelization. Chapter One discusses Colm Tóibín's The Master, which represents James gathering material for The Golden Bowl and other late novels. Both Tóibín's James and James's Maggie Verver display personalities that bear the imprint of family pathology, specifically, alcoholism and abuse, and both inhabit communities where moral culpability becomes difficult to assign. Chapter Two treats Cynthia Ozick's "Dictation," a novel about the composition of The Jolly Corner which portrays the Jamesian author as one among various technologies of writing. As James loses control over his narrative, The Jolly Corner becomes a trauma dream in which Spencer Brydon uncannily prefigures the alcoholic in recovery. In Chapter Three, Alan Hollinghurst replaces James with a flawed stand-in, shifting the focus to James's legacy and the state of humanities study today: Nick Guest is engaged in writing a dissertation on James and a screenplay adaptation of The Spoils of Poynton. At the end of The Line of Beauty, Nick Guest has learned the lesson taught by all these novelizations: that James's texts remain deeply, urgently relevant.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Análise da construção da personagem feminina nos romances Middlemarch, de George Eliot (1871-72), e The Portrait of a Lady (1881), de Henry James, observando como a exploração da subjetividade das protagonistas ao longo de suas trajetórias interfere no enredo e na concepção do romance como um todo. A finalidade última é verificar como esses autores contribuem para o nascimento do romance moderno. / Analysis of the female characters design in George Eliots Middlemarch (1871-72) and Henry Jamess The Portrait of a Lady (1881) regarding the exploration of the female protagonists subjectivity along their trajectories interfere with plot and the conception of the novels. The final aim is to discuss how these novelists contribute to the beginning of the modern novel

Análise da construção da personagem feminina nos romances Middlemarch, de George Eliot (1871-72), e The Portrait of a Lady (1881), de Henry James, observando como a exploração da subjetividade das protagonistas ao longo de suas trajetórias interfere no enredo e na concepção do romance como um todo. A finalidade última é verificar como esses autores contribuem para o nascimento do romance moderno. / Analysis of the female characters design in George Eliots Middlemarch (1871-72) and Henry Jamess The Portrait of a Lady (1881) regarding the exploration of the female protagonists subjectivity along their trajectories interfere with plot and the conception of the novels. The final aim is to discuss how these novelists contribute to the beginning of the modern novel

The Portrait of a Lady (1881), obra de Henry James, conta a história da formação de Isabel Archer, uma jovem americana que se destaca por desejar ser livre e independente em um contexto em que se esperava da mulher que desempenhasse um papel apenas decorativo; por isso, é possível que sua caracterização seja associada a uma protagonista com características feministas. Porém, o desenvolvimento do enredo a leva a um casamento infeliz motivado por determinantes alheios, principalmente pelo interesse financeiro de outras personagens. Este trabalho tem o objetivo de analisar de que maneira a construção da subjetividade feminina da protagonista reflete, ou não, as questões sócio-históricas que marcaram seu contexto de criação, dentre os quais se destacam o início de uma consciência voltada à valorização feminina e busca pelos direitos das mulheres demonstrada pelo movimento pelo sufrágio universal. Em nossa análise consideramos os fatores sociais e políticos da época em que a obra foi escrita e revista, assim como os pressupostos da crítica literária feminista e crítica materialista, de forma a detectar na narrativa jamesiana as características que corroborem com um ponto de vista feminista sobre Isabel Archer, estendendo nossa leitura às personagens e fatos mais relevantes da obra. Assim, chegamos à conclusão de que a protagonista de The Portrait of a Lady apresenta características feministas, como o desejo pela independência, mas não pode ser considerada uma personagem feminista por ter sido subjugada e oprimida pelo poder patriarcal representado pelas figuras masculinas mais importantes à sua volta, principalmente por Gilbert Osmond, seu marido, que personifica nesta obra a dominação masculina total sobre a mente feminina. Contudo, sentimos que o enredo contém outras personagens e fatos que demonstram a força do insconsciente político daquele contexto, que se faz presente mesmo à revelia de seu autor, dentre eles outras personagens que caracterizam atitudes feministas. A importância deste estudo é posicionar uma forte protagonista feminina de Henry James dentre os estudos feministas sobre o Realismo do século XIX. / The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Henry James novel, tells the story of the formation of Isabel Archer, an young American lady who stands out for her desire to be free and independent in a context where nothing more was expected from a woman than having a decorative role; for that, it is possible that her charcterization is associated to a protagonist with feminist traits. However, the development of the plot leads her to an unhappy marriage motivated by outward determinants, especially by other characters financial interest. The objective of this work is to analyze how the construction of the protagonists feminine subjectivity either reflects or not the social and historical matters that marked its context of creation, among which the beginning of a consciousness aimed at a feminine appreciation and the search for the womens rights shown by the international suffrage movement. In our analysis we consider the social and political factors of the time when the novel was written and revised, as the assumptions of the feminist literary criticism and materialist criticism, in order to detect, in the Jamesian narrative, the characteristics that corroborate with a feminist point of view about Isabel Archer, and we extend our reading to the most relevant characters and events of the novel. So, we got to the conclusion that the protagonist in The Portrait of a Lady shows feminist characteristics, as the desire for independence, but she cannot be considered a feminist character for having been subjugated and oppressed by the patriarchal power represented by the most important masculine figures around her, mostly by Gilbert Osmond, her husband, who impersonates the total male domination over the female mind in this novel. Nevertheless, we feel that the plot contains other characters and events that demonstrate the strength of the political unconscious from a context that makes itself present even if unwanted by its author, and among them there are other characters that show feminist attitudes. The importance of this research is to establish a Henry James strong feminine protagonist in the feminist studies about the 19th century Realist literature.

[pt] Esta tese pretende contribuir para compreensão da maneira pela qual Henry James representa a cultura nacional norte-americana, em sua obra tardia. Em 1907, são publicados, sob o título The American Scene, os relatos de sua viagem aos Estados Unidos. A análise deste conjunto de relatos, no contexto da tradição literária norte-americana do século XIX, permite que se reconstitua a imagem construída por seu autor da relação entre indivíduo e sociedade na cultura norteamericana, na virada do século XIX para o XX. A partir dos anos 1820, ensaístas, ficcionistas, sermonistas, poetas e teólogos norte-americanos começaram a identificar o mito etiológico judaico-cristão com o mito fundador da democracia nos Estados Unidos. Inicia-se, deste modo, uma disputa intelectual entre aqueles que pretendiam associar a identidade norte-americana à inocência do Adão antes da Queda e aqueles que a vinculavam à imagem do Adão decaído. A herança desta disputa e o legado literário de autores como Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville e Henry James Sr., conjugados à experiência cultural europeia, fundamentam a versão alegorizada de Henry James do mito do Adão americano, que constitui a narrativa de seu último romance publicado em vida, The Golden Bowl. A análise combinada deste romance e dos relatos de viagem tem como objetivo compreender a importância simbólica que James atribui às noções de Queda e pecado para o amadurecimento moral e o desenvolvimento da sensibilidade estética nos indivíduos. / [en] This thesis intends to contribute to the understanding of Henry James s representation of North-American national culture in his late works. In 1907, he publishes, under the title The American Scene, the travel reports of his visit to United States. The analysis of this array of reports, in the context of the American literary tradition of Nineteenth Century, helps to reconstitute the image constructed by the author of the individual-society relation, in American culture, in the turn of Nineteenth to Twentieth Century. From 1820s onwards, North-American essayists, fictionists, ministers, poets and theologians began to identify the Judeo-Christian etiologic myth with the founding myth of American democracy. It thus began an intellectual dispute between those who intended to associate American identity to the innocence of Adam s before the Fall and those who referred it to the image of the fallen Adam. This dispute s heritage and the literary legacy of writers as Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Henry James Sr., combined with his European cultural experience, ground Henry James s allegorized version of the American Adam s myth, which constitutes the narrative of his last published novel, The Golden Bowl. The conjoined analysis of this novel and the travel reports makes possible to understand the symbolic relevance, in James s work, of the categories of Fall and sin to the moral growth and the development of aesthetic sensibility in the individuals.