Susan M. Griffin - Böcker

Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock knew too much. Self-imposed exiles fully in the know, they approached American and European society as inside-outsiders, a position that afforded them a kind of double vision. Masters of their arts, manipulators of their audiences, prescient and pathbreaking in their techniques, these demanding and meticulous artists fiercely defended authorial and directorial control. Their fictions and films are obsessed with knowledge and its powers: who knows what? What is there to know?The Men Who Knew Too Much innovatively pairs these two greats, showing them to be at once classic and contemporary. Over a dozen major scholars and critics take up works by James and Hitchcock, in paired sets, to explore the often surprising ways that reading James helps us watch Hitchcock and what watching Hitchcock tells us about reading James. A wide-range of approaches offer fresh insights about spectatorship, narrative structure, and cinematic representation, as well as the relationship between technology and art, the powers of silence, sensory-and sensational-experiences, the impact of cognition, and the uncertainty of interpretation. The essays explore the avowal and disavowal of familial bonds, as well as questions of Victorian convention, female agency, and male anxiety. And they fruitfully engage issues related to patriarchy, colonialism, national, transnational, and global identities. The capacious collection, with its brilliant insights and intellectual surprises, is equally compelling in its range and cogency for James readers and film theorists, for Hitchcock fans and James scholars.

Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock knew too much. Self-imposed exiles fully in the know, they approached American and European society as inside-outsiders, a position that afforded them a kind of double vision. Masters of their arts, manipulators of their audiences, prescient and pathbreaking in their techniques, these demanding and meticulous artists fiercely defended authorial and directorial control. Their fictions and films are obsessed with knowledge and its powers: who knows what? What is there to know?The Men Who Knew Too Much innovatively pairs these two greats, showing them to be at once classic and contemporary. Over a dozen major scholars and critics take up works by James and Hitchcock, in paired sets, to explore the often surprising ways that reading James helps us watch Hitchcock and what watching Hitchcock tells us about reading James. A wide-range of approaches offer fresh insights about spectatorship, narrative structure, and cinematic representation, as well as the relationship between technology and art, the powers of silence, sensory-and sensational-experiences, the impact of cognition, and the uncertainty of interpretation. The essays explore the avowal and disavowal of familial bonds, as well as questions of Victorian convention, female agency, and male anxiety. And they fruitfully engage issues related to patriarchy, colonialism, national, transnational, and global identities. The capacious collection, with its brilliant insights and intellectual surprises, is equally compelling in its range and cogency for James readers and film theorists, for Hitchcock fans and James scholars.

In The Art of Criticism, William Veeder and Susan M. Griffin have brought together for the first time the best of the Master's critical work: the most important of his Prefaces, which R. P. Blackmur has called "the most sustained and I think the most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence"; his studies of Hawthorne, George Eliot, Balzac, Zola, de Maupassant, Turgenev, Sante-Beuve, and Arnold; and his essays on the function of criticism and the future of the novel. The editors have provided what James himself emphasized in his literary criticism—the text's context. Each selection is framed by an editorial commentary and notes which give its biographical, bibliographical, and critical background and cite other references in James' work to the topic discussed. This framework, along with the editors' introduction, gives the reader a sense of the place of these pieces in the history of criticism.

Susan Griffin uncovers and analyses the important but neglected body of anti-Catholic fiction written between the 1830s and the turn of the century in both Britain and America. Griffin examines Anglo-American anti-Catholicism and reveals how this sentiment provided Victorians with a set of political, cultural and literary tropes through which they defined themselves as Protestant and therefore normative. She draws on a broad range of writing including works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Kingsley, Henry James, Charlotte Bronte and a range of lesser-known writers. Griffin traces how nineteenth-century writers constructed a Church of Rome against which 'America', 'Britain' and 'Protestant' might be identified and critiqued. This book will be essential reading for scholars working on British Victorian literature as well as nineteenth-century American literature; it will be of interest to scholars of literary, cultural and religious studies.

Susan Griffin uncovers and analyses the important but neglected body of anti-Catholic fiction written between the 1830s and the turn of the century in both Britain and America. Griffin examines Anglo-American anti-Catholicism and reveals how this sentiment provided Victorians with a set of political, cultural and literary tropes through which they defined themselves as Protestant and therefore normative. She draws on a broad range of writing including works by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Kingsley, Henry James, Charlotte Bronte and a range of lesser-known writers. Griffin traces how nineteenth-century writers constructed a Church of Rome against which 'America', 'Britain' and 'Protestant' might be identified and critiqued. This book will be essential reading for scholars working on British Victorian literature as well as nineteenth-century American literature; it will be of interest to scholars of literary, cultural and religious studies.

This book collects, for the first time, Colm Toibin's critical essays on Henry James. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel about James's life, The Master, Toibin brilliantly analyzes James from a novelist's point of view. Known for his acuity and originality, Toibin is himself a master of fiction and critical works, which makes this collection of his writings on Henry James essential reading for literary critics. But he also writes for general readers. Until now, these writings have been scattered in introductions, essays in the Dublin Times, reviews in the New York Review of Books, and other disparate venues. With humor and verve, Toibin approaches Henry James's life and work in many and various ways. He reveals a novelist haunted by George Eliot and shows how thoroughly James was a New Yorker. He demonstrates how a new edition of Henry James's letters along with a biography of James's sister-in-law alter and enlarge our understanding of the master. His "Afterword" is a fictional meditation on the written and the unwritten. Toibin's remarkable insights provide scholars, students, and general readers a fresh encounter with James's well-known texts.

This book collects, for the first time, Colm Toibin's critical essays on Henry James. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel about James's life, The Master, Toibin brilliantly analyzes James from a novelist's point of view. Known for his acuity and originality, Toibin is himself a master of fiction and critical works, which makes this collection of his writings on Henry James essential reading for literary critics. But he also writes for general readers. Until now, these writings have been scattered in introductions, essays in the Dublin Times, reviews in the New York Review of Books, and other disparate venues. With humor and verve, Toibin approaches Henry James's life and work in many and various ways. He reveals a novelist haunted by George Eliot and shows how thoroughly James was a New Yorker. He demonstrates how a new edition of Henry James's letters along with a biography of James's sister-in-law alter and enlarge our understanding of the master. His "Afterword" is a fictional meditation on the written and the unwritten. Toibin's remarkable insights provide scholars, students, and general readers a fresh encounter with James's well-known texts.

Why has a nineteenth-century author with an elitist reputation proved so popular with directors as varied as William Wyler, François Truffaut, and James Ivory? A partial answer lies in the way many of Henry James's recurring themes still haunt us: the workings of power, the position of women in society, the complexities of sexuality and desire.Susan Griffin has assembled fifteen of the world's foremost authorities on Henry James to examine both the impact of James on film and the impact of film on James. Anthony Mazella traces the various adaptations of The Turn of the Screw, from novel to play to opera to film. Peggy McCormack examines the ways the personal lives of Peter Bogdanovich and then-girlfriend Cybill Shepherd influenced critical reaction to Daisy Miller (1974). Leland Person points out the consequences of casting Christopher Reeve -- then better known as Superman -- in The Bostonians (1984) during the conservative political context of the first Reagan presidency. Nancy Bentley defends Jane Campion's anachronistic reading of Portrait of a Lady (1996) as being more "authentic" than the more common period costume dramas. Dale Bauer observes James's influence on such films as Next Stop, Wonderland (1998) and Notting Hill (1999). Marc Bousquet explores the ways Wings of the Dove (1997) addresses the economic and cultural situations of Gen-X viewers. Other fascinating essays as well as a complete filmography and bibliography of work on James and film round out the collection.

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. James's The Europeans gently satirizes both early nineteenth-century New England society and the sophisticated visiting Europeans who encounter it. While this wryly comic novel has had its critical champions - F. R. Leavis and Richard Poirier among them - it has not previously received the scholarly attention it deserves. This edition, based on the work's first book appearance (Macmillan, 1878), reconstructs the novel's literary, cultural and historical contexts, provides extensive annotation, and gives a detailed textual history of the work, drawing on newly available James letters. It will be of interest to James scholars, book historians and students of nineteenth-century Anglo-American literature and culture, and will also re-introduce readers to the pleasures of Henry James's early style.

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. Published in two volumes in 1880, Washington Square dramatises the plight of Catherine Sloper, a rich heiress, whose father, a successful doctor, identifies her one suitor, Morris Townsend, as a fortune-hunter. The novel thus draws on the sentimental tradition, which it develops with subtle, sympathetic irony, in a realist direction. This edition is the first to provide a full account of the context in which the book was composed and received, and to include the original illustrations by Punch-cartoonist George Du Maurier. Extensive explanatory notes enable modern readers to understand its nuanced historical, cultural and literary references, and its complex textual history.

The Cambridge Edition of the Complete Fiction of Henry James provides, for the first time, a scholarly edition of a major writer whose work continues to be read, quoted, adapted and studied. Published in two volumes in 1880, Washington Square dramatises the plight of Catherine Sloper, a rich heiress, whose father, a successful doctor, identifies her one suitor, Morris Townsend, as a fortune-hunter. The novel thus draws on the sentimental tradition, which it develops with subtle, sympathetic irony, in a realist direction. This edition is the first to provide a full account of the context in which the book was composed and received, and to include the original illustrations by Punch-cartoonist George Du Maurier. Extensive explanatory notes enable modern readers to understand its nuanced historical, cultural and literary references, and its complex textual history.