Henry James Against the Aesthetic Movement

David Garrett Izzo is an emeritus professor of English who has published 16 books and 60 essays of literary scholarship, as well as three novels and two plays. He lives in Haw River, North Carolina. Daniel T. O’Hara is the first Mellon Term Professor of Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and professor of English at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of five books and the editor or co-editor of four others.

“stimulating...recommended”—Choice.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgments      IntroductionDANIEL T. O’HARA      I. Critical ContextsThe Henry James Revival of the 1930sDAVID GARRETT IZZO      II. Selective Overviews: Men and WomenThree Aesthetes in Profile: Gilbert Osmond, Mark Ambient, and Gabriel NashMAURIZIO ASCARI      Killing Mothers: Decadent Women in James’s Literary TalesDONATELLA IZZO      III. Contemporaneous Connections“The Master in the Middle Distance”: Max Beerbohm, Henry James and Literary ForgeryMAURIZIO ASCARI      “At All Times Conspicuous as Art”: Henry James, Margaret Oliphant, and Resistance to DecadenceSOLVEIG C. ROBINSON      IV. Issues of Representation: Art and FictionThe Face of Decadence in The Sacred FountSHEILA TEAHAN      Figuring the Princess: The Princess Casamassima and Pater’s Mona LisaANDREA CABUS-COLDWELL      On Not Representing Milly Theale: Sacrificing for Art in The Wings of the DoveMARK CONROY      “The Figure in the Carpet” as an Allegory of ReadingVITTORIA INTONTI      V. Decadence, Identity, and HomosexualityOn the Ladder of Social Observation: Images of Decadence and Morality in James’s Washington Square and Wilde’sAn Ideal HusbandJAMES FISHER      The Importance of Being Henry James: What the Master Learned from Oscar WildeROBERT COMBS      Papa, Postcards, Perfume, Phallic Keys: James, Symonds, and Late-Victorian Fictions of HomosexualitySTEPHEN DA SILVA      A Pair of AfterwordsDAVID GARRETT IZZO      About the Contributors      Index