“The Historian of Fine Consciences”: Fiction, Reality, and Ethics in Henry James’ Work

Abstract

This article examines the way the Anglo-American writer Henry James (1843-1916) connects, in his work of literary criticism and fiction, the epistemological, ethical, and cultural aspects of the processes concerning the knowledge of reality and its literary representation. It analyzes the historicity of certain formal and thematic features of James’ texts, which suggest the fragmentary and unstable quality of the cognitive experience and the ethical choices based on it. Acknowledging similarities between these features of James’ work and those of the works of other modernist writers, who overthrow the representational assumptions of 19th century realistic novel, it intends to understand the particularities of James’ criticism of these assumptions, i.e., the singular manner in which his criticism is related to his interpretation of the American intellectual tradition.