Henry James and the Writing of Transport
By Alicia Rix
Cambridge UP, 2025
ISBN: 9781108473170
Few studies of Henry James and travel attend to the act of traveling itself: a formative experience for the author and for his invariably itinerant characters. This book explores the relationship between transport and representation in James's later fiction, examining the ineluctable significance of moving and being moved. Each chapter adopts a particular vehicle: by ship, cab, train, motorcar and bicycle, showing how James makes use of the cyclist's embroilment in media culture, the ocean-traveler's fascination with record, or the cabby's superior knowledge of geographical and sexual relations.
BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.
Drawing on contemporary newspapers, fiction, and guidebooks, Henry James and the Writing of Transport demonstrates how transport is not only contextually crucial to James's fictions but inheres in his style and logic. In particular, it argues, transport ministers to James's complex preoccupation with relationality: a quality which ranges from the intense subjectivity of his fictional worlds to their series of transatlantic encounters.
- Offers new perspective on Henry James's aesthetic as well as engaging with emerging critical trends in literary modernism
- Challenges current understandings of Henry James's writing style
- Supplies new critical readings of relatively unexamined texts by Henry James
Alicia Rix has published in The Henry James Review, Critical Quarterly, Symbiosis, and The Journal of Modern Literature, and appeared on BBC4's "Literary Landscape: The Coast." She also regularly reviews for The Times Literary Supplement.
No comments:
Post a Comment