This study of renunciation and self-realization examines four of Henry James's novels which have been selected for the centrality of this theme. Following James's failure as a dramatist, in the novels of the major phase, from 1897 on, the theme of renunciation becomes primary as James's work achieves psychological and stylistic maturity. In addition Henry James's letters, notebooks, and prefaces will be used to indicate his attitudes concerning renunciation.

The thesis explores a theme common to three early novels by Henry James: the pursuit of romantic relationship and conflict involving romance. The theses analyses these three novels: The American, The Europeans and Washington Square. Except for Washington Square, the protagonists are American, and there is no happy ending in romance. There are another common themes are wealth, the climbing up in society, manners, and religion and psychological motive, which play a major role in addition to love. The thesis show both positive and negative aspects of an individual ability to pursue a romantic relationship with various obstacles that create a new life for him or her. Henry James's life is considered as a possible inspiration for having written the three novels.

Washington Square, like The Portrait of a Lady, is an open-ended Henry James novel that concludes ambiguously and unhappily, counter to the trend of many other Victorian novels. While many contemporary Victorian novels center on marriage and inheritance plots, concluding their protagonists' struggles with felicitous performative utterances of "I do" and "I bequeath," Catherine Sloper's future is less clear: at the conclusion of Washington Square, she remains both unmarried and disinherited. Both characters and readers alike seem stymied by Catherine's motivations at the end of the novel, as famously studied in Judith Butler's essay, "Values of Difficulty." Catherine seems calculable, submissive, and guileless at the beginning of the novel--both her father, Dr. Sloper, and her suitor, Morris Townsend, judge her to be good but "decidedly not clever." So what happens over the course of the novel to produce Catherine's infelicitous and incomprehensible outcome? This thesis's performative reading of Washington Square sheds light on the infelicitous and inscrutable conclusion to Catherine's story. At a critical moment in the novel, when her inheritance is at stake, Catherine refuses to be coerced into offering a promise that is demanded from her by her father. "I can't explain," says Catherine," "And I can't promise." This refusal to promise, or refusal to enact a felicitous performative--accompanied by an inability to explain her refusal--is a suspensive and powerful method of disinterpellation. Catherine unmakes herself as a subject in the capitalist ideology of the male antagonists in Washington Square--and thus, becomes incomprehensible to them--by insisting on infelicity. This powerful disinterpellation helps Catherine regain control over her future.

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No abstract provided. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / Scope and contents: The first part of the thesis is an orientation to the novel itself, since the entire work must be taken as the only meaningful context for a consideration of the substantive variants. The second part consists of an examination of the selected revisions in the light of the full context and of James's theory of revision. The third part is a record of substantive variants. The appendices contain a report on computer collation of a section of the text and two extended notes on specific substantive variants.

Tradução comentada da correspondência entre Henry James (Nova York, 1843 Londres, 1916) e Robert Louis Stevenson (Edimburgo, 1850 Samoa, 1894), inédita em português. A correspondência começou em dezembro de 1884, e se estendeu por uma década. As cartas revelam uma amizade algo improvável entre dois escritores muito diferentes, e um interesse compartilhado pela arte da ficção. O material analisado joga luz sobre uma discussão importante acerca da literatura em um momento decisivo, à véspera das transformações por que passaria no início do século XX. O ensaio introdutório visa reconstituir o curso dessa discussão e apontar algumas de suas implicações. / Annotated translation of the correspondence between Henry James (New York, 1843 London, 1916) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburg, 1850 Samoa, 1894), unpublished in Portuguese. The correspondence began in December 1884 and lasted for a decade. The letters reveal an unlikely friendship between two very different writers and a shared concern for the art of fiction. The material examined sheds light on an important discussion about literature at a decisive moment, on the eve of the transformations that it was to undergo at the beginning of the twentieth century. The introductory essay seeks to recreate the course of this discussion and point some of its implications.

Thesis (Ph.D)--University of Alberta, 2010. / "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta." Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on July 8, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.

Tradução comentada da correspondência entre Henry James (Nova York, 1843 Londres, 1916) e Robert Louis Stevenson (Edimburgo, 1850 Samoa, 1894), inédita em português. A correspondência começou em dezembro de 1884, e se estendeu por uma década. As cartas revelam uma amizade algo improvável entre dois escritores muito diferentes, e um interesse compartilhado pela arte da ficção. O material analisado joga luz sobre uma discussão importante acerca da literatura em um momento decisivo, à véspera das transformações por que passaria no início do século XX. O ensaio introdutório visa reconstituir o curso dessa discussão e apontar algumas de suas implicações. / Annotated translation of the correspondence between Henry James (New York, 1843 London, 1916) and Robert Louis Stevenson (Edinburg, 1850 Samoa, 1894), unpublished in Portuguese. The correspondence began in December 1884 and lasted for a decade. The letters reveal an unlikely friendship between two very different writers and a shared concern for the art of fiction. The material examined sheds light on an important discussion about literature at a decisive moment, on the eve of the transformations that it was to undergo at the beginning of the twentieth century. The introductory essay seeks to recreate the course of this discussion and point some of its implications.

<p>The purpose of this essay is to explore how different means are used to create indeterminate meaning in Henry James’s novella<em> The Turn of the Screw</em>. It suggests that the indeterminacy creates gaps in the text which the reader is required to fill in during the reading process, and that this indeterminacy is achieved chiefly through the use of an unreliable narrator and of ambiguity in the way the narrator relates the events that take place. The reliability of the narrator is called into question by her personal qualities as well as by narrative factors. Personal qualities that undermine the narrator’s reliability are youth, inexperience, nervousness, excitability and vanity. Narrative factors that damage the narrator’s reliability concern the story as manuscript, the narrator’s role in the story she narrates, and her line of argumentation. The ambiguity in the way events are reported is produced by ambiguous words, dismissed propositions and omissions. The essay demonstrates how the unreliable narrator and the ambiguity combine to make the reader question the narrator’s account and supply his or her own interpretation of key elements in the story, that is, how they invite the reader to “co-author” the text.</p>