ENGL W4603 - Henry James

Institution:

Columbia University in the City of New York

Subject:

Description:

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. (Lecture). "It all comes back to my and your 'fun'-- if we but allow that word its full extension," Henry James wrote to his readers. He also asked us to savor "bewilderment"--"as long as there is plenty of slashing out" against it. The pleasures and perversities and the varieties of Jamesian "fun"--including the zigzaging adventures of Jamesian syntax and sentences and social texts and streams of consciousness--will concern us as we explore a number of his works: The Europeans, Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady, What Maisie Knew, The Turn of the Screw, The Beast in the Jungle, The Ambassadors, and The American Scene (selections). And to gain understanding of the Jamesian aesthetic, especially its demand of intimacy between reader and text, an intimacy that renders formal problems as simultaneously ethical problems, we will read some of his essays and prefaces. The hope is that you come away from the course with a sharpened sense of the intricate "fun" that great literature affords. Requirements: steady attendance, participation, weekly short response papers and a 10-12 pp final essay.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.columbia.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 854-1754

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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