Henry James and Globalization

Abstract

The revival of interest in Henry James’s writings in the 1990s and into the new century has attracted considerable comment from scholars and public intellectuals. Feature films based on The Portrait of a Lady, Washington Square, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl have been accompanied by the republication of virtually all of Henry James’s writings, including minor novels, such as The Outcry, and such nonfiction as his travel writings and literary criticism. One reasonable explanation is that Henry James so exemplifies high culture at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth centuries that the revival of interest in his work must suggest some return to the sophisticated aesthetic values of a more cultivated age. In our era of overnight celebrities, video-game and computer obsessions, television news sound bytes, sitcom humor, and standup one-liners, the difficulty of Henry James’s prose may present a refreshing alternative to the superficiality of postmodern culture. Indeed, this renewed interest in James may be extended to some of his most important modernist heirs, including James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and T. S. Eliot, each of whom explicitly acknowledged Henry James’s formative influence (Rowe, “For Mature Audiences” 190–1).