Łobodziec, Agnieszka - red. nauk. ; Filipczak, Iwona - red. nauk.
Title:Moving beyond (cultural) criticism in Henry James`s late transatlantic encounters
Group publication title: Subject and Keywords:America ; commercial culture ; criticism ; perception shift
Abstract:The essay examines Henry James`s late reengagements with America enacted in his travelogue ?The American Scene? (1907) and his tale ?A Round of Visits? (1910) . Featuring Europeanized Americans returning to the United States after a long absence, both texts explore a complex relationship between the altered culture and the visitors` shifting attitude towards it . ; The essay demonstrates that it is those shifts in the autobiographical narrator`s or charakter`s stance that allow them to overcome a customary critical attitude and engage differently with the ambiguously familiar/unfamiliar reality . A detached position, initially adopted, produces responses which reflect the repatriated observer`s alienation and a harsh criticism of American commercial culture, while immersion in the reality results in the abandonment of the detached, critical stance, allowing for a different, non-intentional engagement with the scene . ; By foregrounding other than intellectual modes of seeing and experiencing, the texts problematize the very idea of definitive judgment and masterful stance vis-a-vis reality . As the insights presented in the analyzed works are later echoed in Walter Benjamin as well as in Proust, their conceptions of ?intentionless state of being? and ?involuntary memory? respectively were enlisted to illuminate James`s characters` experience .
Publisher:Zielona Góra: Oficyna Wydawnicza Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego
Date: Resource Type: Format: DOI: Pages: Source:Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Zielonogórskiego: Seria Scripta Humana, tom 7
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