David James, Shared Impressions: Thomas Hardy, Henry James and the Future of Picturing. Symbiosis, 11.1 (April 2007) 31-58.

This essay was originally published in Symbiosis: A Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, Volume 11.1 (April 2007) pp. 31-58

Essay Topics and Keywords:

Henry James, The American Scene, Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Hand of Ethelberta, The Return of the Native.

An extract from this essay:

“As they considered the conjunction of approximation and fabrication when fictionalizing their respective surroundings, Hardy and James pointed to the difficulties of encompassing the experience of physical terrains. An ambitious yet unimposing tenor, picturing itself is given to a modesty motif—recurrent in James’s travel writings—of being unable to duplicate in prose the splendour of sceneries witnessed in awe. And likewise for Hardy, narrative vision can be used to complicate its own mimetic claims to rendition. Taking lessons from Turner’s deliberate indistinctness, he maintained that ‘The “simply natural” is interesting no longer’.”

David James

University of Nottingham