The mature work of Henry James gives the fullest expression of certain ideals which I have called the ideals of consciousness and conduct. These ideals are the subject of this thesis. As they are best illustrated in the two novels The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904), I have first analysed these books in detail. Though emphasising "theme" rather than "techniques" (I make the usual working distinction while recognising its limitations), I have also attempted to show how intimately James's technique is related to his exploration of consciousness and conduct. In Part Three I have tried to gather up ideas arising from the analyses of The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl to compare them, expand on them and generalise from them. In this way I have arrived at conclusions that may help to interpret mature vision of James.

This thesis examines the structures guiding and informing reading intrinsic to James's "late" style. It seeks to explore James's analogy between reading as an ethical activity and his own and his characters' acts of storytelling. It looks first at the necessities of reading as they are presented through the character of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, to find that reading for James is itself a form of storytelling. James's concept of "revision," which replaces the concept of "re-writing," unites the activities of reading and storytelling because both activities, to be free, must be guided by the contingencies of experience. James's emphasis on the determinations of experience, which yields changing apprehensions of the same material, at once makes reading a test of the reader's resources in dealing with unexpected and complex situations, and storytelling an act of improvisation if it is to be faithful to the demands of its subject. The second half of the thesis examines Maggie Verver's command of storytelling in The Golden Bowl. It finds that ethical storytellers must have the same faith in their subject matter as ethical readers must have in the texts they engage. Finally, the thesis unites the study of reading with storytelling by examining the ways in which stories are exemplary performances whose the most significant subject is the audience. It is the forms of judgement that a work of art elicits which are essential to establishing alternative conceptions of the good and new modes of valuation in a community.

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