Mastering Critical Theory

Abstract

In his first published essay (1864), James observed of the volume under review: We opened this work with the hope of finding a general survey of the nature and principles of the subject of which it professes to treat. Its title had led us to anticipate some attempt to codify the vague and desultory canons, which cannot, indeed, be said to govern, but which in some measure define, this department of literature. We had long regretted the absence of any critical treatise upon fiction. 1 James’s pronouncement in this inaugural review is highly prophetic: if his “regret was destined to be embittered by disappointment” ( LCEL 1196) with the contents of Nassau W. Senior’s Essays on Fiction , he was nonetheless prescribing for himself a half century’s program of critical reflection on the nature and principles of the novel. Following Matthew Arnold’s exalted view of the profession of letters, James both claims for the novel the highest philosophical and aesthetic value and conceives of literary criticism as a discipline whose aesthetic and social benefit is “inestimably precious and beautiful” ( LCEL 98). Over his long career, James produced a substantial body of critical and theoretical writings the sum of whose parts is much more than a “critical treatise upon fiction.” Despite subsequent efforts to codify and systematize his thinking, this body of writing is strikingly heterogeneous in its theoretical implications. It is precisely because of this heterogeneity that James either anticipates or contributes directly to critical formations as different as phenomenology, Russian formalism, New Criticism, Anglo-American narrative theory, queer theory, and deconstruction. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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