In his powerful synthesis of his predecessors, in the rigor and the richness of his style, in the continued usefulness of his formal experiments and critical pronouncements, the work of Henry james straddles two continents and two centuries and stands as the summa of the novel form. We’ll begin our study by reading some of his early short stories and reviews, along with the short novel, Washington Square. We’ll then turn to The Portrait of a Lady, his enduring and inexhaustible study of the American encounter with Europe, and then to his political novel The Bostonians, the only one of his majors works to take place entirely on American soil. We’ll spend a couple of weeks on his short fiction, reading stories like “The Aspern Papers” and “The Real Thing,” along with his ode to old furniture, The Spoils of Poynton, before moving on to his difficult late comedy-or tragedy?-The Ambassadors. (Which is, oddly enough, the only one of his big books not to be have been filmed lately….) And we’ll finish with that creepy story “The Jolly Corner,” in which a succesful man returns to New York after decades abroad, and has to confront his own past.

Throughout the term we’ll continue to read in his critical essays, and we will also look at both his biography and a volume of his travel esays, Italian Hours.

Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor. I’m also going to assume that the students admitted wil have read some James before, and that everyone in the course will know “The Turn of the Screw.”

Writing: weekly responses to the reading, posted on an electronic bulletin board; a final paper, approximately 12 pages, written in drafts.