By Daniel Hannah
Proposing a new approach to
Jamesian aesthetics, Daniel Hannah examines the complicated relationship
between Henry James's impressionism and his handling of 'the public.' Hannah
challenges solely phenomenological or pictorial accounts of literary
impressionism, instead foregrounding James's treatment of the word 'impression'
as a mediatory unit that both resists and accommodates invasive publicity. Thus
even as he envisages a breakdown between public and private at the end of the
nineteenth century, James registers that breakdown not only as a threat but
also as an opportunity for aesthetic gain. Beginning with a reading of 'The Art
of Fiction' as both a public-forming essay and an aesthetic manifesto, Hannah's
study examines James's responses to painterly impressionism and to
aestheticism, and offers original readings of What Maisie Knew, The Wings of the Dove, and The
American Scene that treat James's articulation of impressionism in
relation to the child, the future of the novel, and shifts in the American
national imaginary. Hannah's study persuasively argues that throughout his
career James returns to impressionability not only as a site of immense
vulnerability in an age of rapid change but also as a crucible for reshaping,
challenging, and adapting to the public sphere’s shifting forms.
'Focusing on the tendency in
Impressionism to trouble distinctions between the public and the private,
Daniel Hannah’s sophisticated and compelling book opens up broad new views of
much that makes Henry James’s writing meaningful and much that has yet to be
seen in the problem of Impressionism.'
--Jesse E. Matz, Kenyon
College, USA
