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New essays on Daisy Miller and The turn of the screw

New essays on Daisy Miller and The turn of the screw

Short Stories

Vivian R. Pollak

Authors: Vivian R. Pollak
Print type: BOOK

Description:

The American Novel series provides students of American literature with introductory critical guides to the greatest works of American fiction. Each volume begins with a substantial introduction by a distinguished authority on the text, giving details of the novel's composition, publication history, and contemporary reception, as well as a survey of major critical trends and readings from first publication to the present. This overview is followed by a group of new essays, each specially commissioned from a leading scholar in the field, which together constitute a forum of interpretative methods and prominent contemporary ideas on the text. There are also helpful guides to further reading. Specifically designed for undergraduates, the series will be a powerful resource for anyone engaged in the critical analysis of major American novels and other important texts. Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw may be Henry James's most widely read tales. Certainly, these swiftly moving accounts of failed connections are among the best examples of his shorter fiction. One represents the international theme that made him famous; the other exemplifies the multiple meanings that make him modern. The introduction to this volume locates his fiction in the context of the family that conditioned his concern with the sexual politics of intimate experience. In the four essays that follow, Kenneth Graham offers a close reading of Daisy that emphasizes the heroine's unknowability; Robert Weisbuch examines Winterbourne as a specimen of James's formidable bachelor type; Millicent Bell places the ghost story governess in the traditions of English fiction and society; and David McWhirter provides a critique of female authority. Deftly summarizing earlier criticism, these essays demonstrate the continuing appeal of Henry James in our time.