{"id":124,"date":"2019-05-27T06:08:25","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T06:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engp10.epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/?post_type=chapter&p=124"},"modified":"2019-05-28T12:26:52","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T12:26:52","slug":"henry-james-the-art-of-fiction","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/chapter\/henry-james-the-art-of-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry James: The Art of Fiction"},"content":{"raw":"
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\r\n\r\nObjectives<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

This chapter aims at elucidating Henry James\u2019s essay \u201cThe Art of Fiction,\u201d published in Longman\u2019s Magazine 4 (1884) and reprinted in Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888). The chapter also discusses James\u2019s assumptions for which he criticizes Mr. Walter Besant\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d (1884). Henry James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d is a reply to Mr. Walter Besant\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Besant\u2019s ethical views of writing fiction inspired many of his contemporary fiction-writers, critics, and reviewers. Henry James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d is one of the parts of that debate. It presents realism as a great tool to express what James called \u201cimpression of life.\u201d There are two parts in this module. The first part presents Henry James as critic of Novelistic Art and the second part elucidates his \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d Walter Besant and Henry James: On the Art of Fiction<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n

Part I<\/strong><\/p>\r\n

Henry James as Critic of Novelistic Art<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n

Henry James (1843\u20131916) was a British-American novelist and critic. He remained an artistic- realist till the end. His famous novels were published between 1901-1914 (the death of Victoria and the beginning of World War I). Since King Edward VII reigned from 1901 to 1910, the period is also called the Edwardian Period in English Literature. Besides writing novels based on observed lives of the Americans and the English, Henry James wrote many critical notes on writers and propagandists. Martha Nussbaum has rightly remarked that James\u2019s The\u00a0<\/em>Ambassadors <\/em>challenged the conception of rule-dominated moral reasoning. (No\u00ebl Carroll \u201cArt and the Moral Realm\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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In this module Henry James\u2019s works are critically assessed to justify him as a critic. His works of criticism carry various titles: French Poets and Novelists <\/em>(I878), Hawthorne <\/em>(I879), Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888), Essays in London and Elsewhere <\/em>(I893), and Notes on Novelists <\/em>(1914). His Views and Reviews <\/em>(1908) contains his early reviews, introductions, and pronouncements in letters. Some other critical notes, reviews and epistles were published posthumously titled Notes and Reviews <\/em>(1921), The Future of the Novel <\/em>(I956), American Essays <\/em>(I956), and Literary Reviews and Essays <\/em>(1957).<\/p>\r\n \r\n

As a critic, besides writing prefaces to his novels, <\/strong>Henry James meditated critically on contemporary novelists and predecessors. As a young reviewer, he referred repeatedly to Nathaniel Hawthorne's work. He was fond of reading the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804- 1864). He often used Hawthorne\u2019s work as touchstone to assess awareness of other novelists to hidden realities of societies. His first lengthy discussion of Hawthorne appeared in The Nation <\/em>in March, 1872. He also wrote about Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Balzac, Goethe, Gautier, Matthew Arnold, Flaubert, Maupassant, and Alphonse Daudet. He criticized Beuve for his negative responses to Honor\u00e9 de Balzac .. He criticized Hippolyte Taine (1828-93) for not giving enough attention attention to \u201cthe intellectual climate of our literature.\u201d However, he admires Taine\u2019s essay on Balzac. He admires Balzac and Gautier for their art of representing life and moral responsibility. He liked Matthew Arnold\u2019s idea of high seriousness and moral value and followed\u00a0the theory of criticism of life as an ingredient of the novel. It seems that he formulates his theory of criticism on the observation of Arnold as moral critic. He appreciated Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, George Eliot, Miss Harriet Prescott, Wells, Bennett, and Turgenev for their artistic capacities to represent life. He ridiculed A.C. Swinburne, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde for their futile artistic attempts. He praised the concept of \u201cThe New Novel\u201d for its actual connection with realities and signs of life.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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The critics regard James as a realist because he believes that an artist must have the power of selecting the most suitable sign, mark, incident, or the fragment of an event to exemplify existing society as a whole. In Hawthorne <\/em>he remarks that an artist is not historian but a knower of the original event. He does not open the documents of the events but gives hints. In Notes on Novelists with Some Other Notes <\/em>(1914) he asserts, \u201cArt cannot imitate life, if it does, it becomes a reflection of confusion\u201d (\u201cGabriele D\u2019Annunzio\u201d 275). He differentiates life from art: \u201cLife being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection\u201d(AF) He believes that art is a \u201cchemical process, the crucible or retort from which things emerge for a new function\u201d (LC: 1984. 930) and that the artist is an alchemist who \u201crenews something like the old dream of the secret of life\u201d. In other words, we can say that he includes intentions of both the writer and the reader and their crafts of understanding the world. He does not allow his author to write anything irrelevant to the understanding of the reader. It is with this vision of art that he often maintains distinction between the novel and romance. If romance adheres to adventure, dare, and acts of struggling characters, he accepts it and affirms that it adheres to unnatural things or subject matters. In The Future of the Novel: Essays on the Art of Fiction<\/em>, James\u00a0declares: \u201cLiterature, is an objective, projected result; it is life that is the unconscious, the agitated, the struggling, floundering cause\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Henry James thinks that an artist is an alchemist because he knows how to uniform varieties of form, unity, tone and he knows how to create illusion \u2014 the illusion of a world which is akin to our living reality. This reality doubles the charm of art and entertains the reader. This art of the novelist validates his greatness because it produces enjoyment and cheerfulness in the reader. The Artist\u2019s art of creating illusion depends on the power of his art to mirror the signs of realities. Henry James contends: \u201cThe artist should have at least tried his best to be cheerful\u201d (\u201cIvan Turgenev\u201d LC: 997). Art of an artist \u201cmust lift up the reader's heart\u201d (\u201cAlexandre Dumas\u201d 279). This contention inspires his belief that \u201cLife is dispiriting; art is inspiring\u201d (\u201cAlexandre Dumas\u201d LC: 279). In Essays in London and Elsewhere <\/em>he condemns Turgenev for his gloomy writing; condemns Flaubert for his social and political partiality and for his hatred of the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Henry James is one of the greatest masters of modern literature who developed the novelistic art as genre-theory. R. P. Blackmur edited James\u2019s \u201cPrefaces\u201d into one volume titled The Art of the Novel <\/em>(1934) which exemplify how the novel reflects the tints of life. He says in his \u201cPrefaces\u201d to his novels that an art of enjoyment remains after exorcising the sophisticated artistry, imaginative, or factual imitation.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Critics\u2019 Remarks on Henry James as Critic<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n \r\n

T. S. Eliot does not consider Henry James a successful literary critic. He says, \u201cHis criticism of books and writers is feeble \u2026 Henry was not a literary critic\u201d (\u201cOn Henry James\u201d 1918; 1945). Eliot acknowledges James as a novelist and remarks in this context that \u201che had a mind so fine\u00a0that no idea could violate it\u201d (1918; 1945). In his essay \u201cArnold and Pater,\u201d Eliot\u2019s concluding remarks justify James as a follower of Art for Art\u2019s Sake and not a realist novelist (<\/span>Selected Essays <\/em>405). However, Ren\u00e9 Wellek in his essay \u201cHenry James's Literary Theory and Criticism\u201d (1958) neglects Eliot\u2019s bitter criticism and appreciates Henry James\u2019s art of criticism. He elucidates how his works constitute a bridge between the early nineteenth century criticism and modern criticism.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Henry James to my mind is by far the best American critic of the nineteenth century who \u2026 is brimful of ideas and critical concepts and has a well-defined theory and a point of view which allow him to characterize sensitively and evaluate persuasively a wide range of writers: largely, of course, the French, English, and American novelists of his own time\u2026All his life he was acutely conscious of the low status and condition of English and American criticism, and the need of a revival of criticism, especially of the novel.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Percy Lubbock (1879-1965) in The Craft of Fiction <\/em>(1921) calls James \u201cthe only real scholar in the art\u201d and considers him \u201cthe novelist who carried his research into the theory of the art further than any other\".<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Morris Roberts\u2019s Henry James\u2019s Criticism <\/em>declares that \"no critic has ever gone more deeply\u00a0 into the philosophy of art\u201d (1929 120) R. P. Blackmur appreciates James\u2019s \u201cPrefaces\u201d to the New York edition of his novels as \u201cthe most sustained and the most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence\u201d. Garry L. Hagberg , a professor, philosopher, and jazz musician, studied Henry James in the purview of Wittgensteinian theory of meaning and justified him as a philosophic literary critic in his book Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory <\/em>(1994). Henry James\u2019s critical essays canonized the theory of narrative\u00a0technique, artistry, psychological realism and are still cited in the discourses of M.M. Bakhtin, Gerard Genet, and Frederic Jameson. Frederic Jameson has admired Henry James\u2019s concept of \u201cPoint of View\u201d as a historic act in relation to his interpretation of \u201creification\u201d and \u201ccommodification.\u201d Jameson has disseminated James\u2019s views of fiction with reference to the fictional potent of reflecting the masses (See \u201cThe Vanishing Mediator\u201d in <\/span>Ideologies of Theories <\/em>(2008); \u201cRomance and Reification\u201d in <\/span>The Political Unconscious <\/em>(1981; 2002).<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n\r\nPart II\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n\r\n \r\n

Henry James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d and \u201cthe era of discussion\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n

In \u201cThe Art of Fiction,\u201d Henry James has used the phrase \u201cthe era of discussion\u201d with reference to the then ongoing debate on the art of fiction. In the debate there were chiefly four writers of his time: William Dean Howells, Besant, James, and Stevenson. The root of the \u201cera of discussion\u201d (AF 52) is Howells\u2019s essay \u201cHenry James Jr.\u201d written in response to Henry James\u2019s art of characterization and published in The Century Magazine <\/em>November 1882. The essay set\u00a0 off the controversy for the author\u2019s racial observation of Henry James\u2019s work. In this essay, Howells introduces James\u2019s works in relation with his family background and his personal associations. Howells observes James\u2019s art of characterization and calls him the \u201cartistic-analyst\u201d novelist. He says, \u201cEvidently it is the character, not the fate, of his people which occupies him\u201d (Howells). He also called him an American representative of the Zola school i.e. the school of realism. He Henry James: \u201cannalist\u201d and \u201canalyst\u201d and admires him as a greater novelist than any other of his time. For Howells James does not tell the stories through intricate plots but presents an analysis of characters taken from society. \u201cIn one manner or other the stories were all\u00a0told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist thinks about persons and situations. Mr. James gratifies this philosophic desire\u201d Howells contends.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Howells introduced the phrase \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d in a statement regarding the English novel . He says: \u201cThe art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray.\u201d Two years later, Mr. Walter Besant, a novelist, a critic and a historian, delivered a lecture on \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d at the Royal Institution in London on 25 April 1884. This lecture inspired many contemporary critics and review writers to speak for and against the art of fiction. On April 26, 1884, an evening newspaper the Pal Mal Gazette <\/em>published a short review of the lecture in the column \u201cOccasional Notes.\u201d On April 30, the Pal Mal Gazette <\/em>published \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d In May, Chatto and Windus published the lecture with the author\u2019s notes and comments. R.H. Hutton published a review of \u201cMr. Besant\u2019s Lecture on Art of Fiction.\u201d In 1891 the New Review <\/em>revived the debate through two symposia, \u201cThe Science of Fiction,\u201d featuring Besant, Paul Barget, and Thomas Hardy, and \u201cThe Science of Criticism,\u201d featuring James, Lang, and Edmund Gosse. In 1895 Henry James\u2019s former friend and the young novelist Vernon Lee, added some relevant ideas in his \u201cOn Literary Construction\u201d published in the Contemporary Review<\/em>. Rob Davidson noted the popularity of the topic in The Master and the Dean<\/em>:<\/p>\r\n \r\n

Besant\u2019s essay, subsequently published in pamphlet form, was briefly reviewed by the Pall Mall Gazette <\/em>and the Spectator <\/em>in London, while in the United States the Nation<\/em>, the New York Times<\/em>, and the New York Tribune <\/em>fleetingly noted Besant\u2019s ideas. Besant\u2019s lecture provoked more ripples than waves, but James clearly saw an opportunity; his own \u201cArt of Fiction\u201d appeared in Longman\u2019s Magazine <\/em>in September 1884.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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Henry James responded to this current debate with the same title \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d He joined this debate in the Longman\u2019s Magazine<\/em>. He called the very affair \u201cthe era of discussion\u201d to\u00a0 which R.L. Stevenson gave a rejoinder in Longman\u2019s Magazine <\/em>in winter and wrote an essay, \u201cA Humble Remonstrance.\u201d James called Stevenson\u2019s essay a \u201cgenuine rejoinder\u201d in his letter written to Stevenson on December 5, 1884. \"The Art of Fiction\" was reprinted in Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888). Stevenson's \u201crejoinder\u201d was included in Memories and Portraits<\/em>. James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d is a response to Mr. Besant views on \u201cThe Arts of Fiction.\u201d James contradicts Besant\u2019s ideas of art of fiction that conform to Belle Letters <\/em>and the training of the artist. Besant is of the view that fiction is one of the Fine Arts. He advances three propositions for it. He says that:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

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  1. Fiction is an Art in every way worthy to be called the sister and the equal of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Poetry ; that is to say, her field is as boundless, her possibilities as vast, her excellences as worthy of admiration, as may be claimed for any of her sister Arts.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. \u00a0It is an Art which is governed and directed by general laws; and that these laws may be laid down and taught with as much precision and exactness as the laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Like the other Fine Arts, Fiction is so far removed from the mere mechanical arts, that no laws or rules whatever can teach it to those who have not already been endowed with the natural and necessary gifts.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    James\u2019s response to Besant\u2019s \u201cArt of Fiction\u201d establishes a theory of fiction as a literary genre. In the beginning of \u201cThe Art of Fiction,\u201d James states that the novel had never been identified as a literary genre. He said that there was no idea printed or documented that could circulate the\u00a0knowledge of the creation of fiction, could declare rules and methods of reading, understanding and writing fiction. He states that fiction \u201chad no air of having a theory, a conviction, a consciousness of itself behind it \u2013 of being the expression of an artistic faith, the result of choice and comparison.\u201d Moreover, he appreciated Mr. Walter Besant\u2019s setting up a meaningful debate on the theory of novel as an art. However, his opinion is different than that of Besant\u2019s. Unlike Besant, James was fond of reading art as personal impressions of life. Here \u2018personal\u2019 corresponds to what he termed the \u201cauthor\u2019s art of execution\u201d based on \u201cexercise of freedom.\u201d As confessed in his letter to Stevenson, he says \u201cMy pages, in <\/span>Longman<\/em>, were simply a plea for liberty.\u201d After reading James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d, one may conclude that Henry James wanted to see the novelistic art free from classical strains. In 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, despised the reading of fiction calling it a \u201ckill-time\u201d rather than a \u201cpass-time.\u201d He imagined it as a \u201cspecies of amusement\u201d which is nothing but \u201cspitting over a bridge\u201d.\u00a0 Henry\u00a0 James appreciates the artistry of the novelist who represents artistic illusion as real as it was before its conversion in the hands of an artist. This becomes possible only if an artist feels that he has the liberty to write what he feels or whatever he experiences as \u201cpersonal impressions of life.\u201d In this manner, Fiction competes with life. The artist lives beyond petty rules made by Besant in his \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d Henry James\u2019s arguments in response to Besant\u2019s art of fiction maybe stated thus:<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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      \r\n \t
    1. He believes that art lives upon developing arguments, experiment, curiosity, \u201cupon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints\u2026 Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.\u201d<\/li>\r\n \t
    2. Literature should be either instructive or amusing. The most important objective of the author is how to make his writing interesting and catchy.<\/li>\r\n \t
    3. Author as artist must realize his power of freedom to feel and execute his feeling after its filtrations. The art of fiction cannot be disowned or cannot be trained or taught.<\/li>\r\n \t
    4. He justifies the categories of the good and bad novels: \u201cthe bad is swept, with all the daubed canvases and spoiled marble, into some unvisited limbo or infinite rubbish-yard, beneath the back-windows of the world, and the good subsists and emits its light and stimulates our desire for perfection.\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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      Thinking and its execution belongs to the author. Neither thinking nor its execution can be taught. Art of thinking cannot be imitated nor can it be represented in its actual condition, because the art of thinking lies in innovativeness of an individual. Henry James affirms that \u201cthe old Evangelical hostility\u201d and theories developed under its impression (Platonic Idealism of Art) since the Renaissance have damaged the value of Fiction. He contradicts Besant\u2019s idea of art saying that art includes liberty of the artist. He differentiates a novelist from a painter. The painter knows the scientific materials he uses in the painting whereas a novelist knows his articles or subjects but he has to choose, select, or opt for the subjects of characterization and events that constitute plot\u2014a living plot which tells of an analysis of life; a contrast of the past and the present. The selection of incidents which takes place in day-to-day life also dwells in the space of a writer\u2019s \u201cfreedom to feel and say\u201d:<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      A novel is in its broadest definition a personal impression of life; that, to begin with, constitutes its value which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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      The author chooses the form after choosing the facts or subjects, and then he chooses tone and finally executes it for the readers\u2019 pleasure. These qualities of an author make him a novelist. They are the result of his personal effort: \u201cThe execution belongs to the author alone; it is what is most personal to him, and we measure him by that,\u201d Henry James contends. He thinks that the artistry of an author is measured through measuring his art of execution\u2014the result of immeasurable attempts. The art of a novelist is the result of a personal effort\u201d and that is why, art without author is meaningless. Art is not sufficient; artistry of an author produces effect in the art. Artistry is not the subject of divine inspiration as Besant declares in his last proposition but a result of the artist\u2019s personal effort. James emphasizes that the art of fiction lives upon the author\u2019s art of experimental execution: \u201cthere is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant \u2014 no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      Creativity cannot be taught, nor can it be injected by any other than the writer himself. Art is boundless and the artist has limitless power of execution. Henry James objects to Besant\u2019s idea of the possibility of teaching how to write fiction or how to become an artist. James\u2019s idea of \u201cliberty\u201d contradicts Besant\u2019s idea. In fact, he contradicts all that Mr. Besant attributes to the rules to be followed by the novelist and the subjects he chooses for his novel. He objects to the \u201cprecision and exactness\u201d of \u201cthe laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion\u201d and \u201cconscious moral purpose;\u201d and \u201cIt is almost impossible to estimate too highly the value of careful workmanship\u2014that is, of style;\u201d however \u201cthe most important point of all is the story;\u201d and \u201cthe story is everything.\u201d<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      He agrees with critics who believe that fiction ought to reflect Realism. However, his contention about the sense of reality in the novel is a bit different from that of other Realists. For him, documentation of exactness of reality in an artistic manner is not a possible act because of\u00a0immensity and uncertainty of realities: \u201chumanity is immense, and reality has a myriad forms\u201d (64). Social reality cannot be represented as it is found in the society. The filtration of realities is a process of novelist\u2019s art of execution. He also agrees with critics who believe that the novel is an expression of the novelist\u2019s personal experience. However, he thinks, \u201cexperience is limitless.\u201d How can an exact experience be expressed? He clarifies that an experience is like a \u201cspider-web\u201d: \u201cExperience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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      An Experience cannot be expressed as it is apprehended. Thus both reality and experience are inexpressible phenomena. On this ground, he discards Besant and affirms that expression of reality and experience lacks \u2018preciseness and exactness\u2019 and that the novel is not the writer\u2019s experience or the result of the seen world but \u201cimpressions\u201d or \u201ctints\u201d of lived experience. For him, impression is the unseen experience filtered from the seen one; it is an implication of an incident (Besant call it \u201cexperience\u201d), a pattern, \u201cair of reality\u201d etc.\u201d The power of the artist lies in the power of writing such traces, \u201cimpressions,\u201d \u201cair of reality\u201d etc. As he says:<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it\u2014this\u00a0 cluster of gifts may almost be\u00a0 said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are <\/em>experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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      The soul of a novel is not the story but incidents. For James, experience is an incident; and this incident embellishes the novelistic art. This thinking demolishes the classic difference between the novel of character and the novel of incident. James thinks that the soul of novel is not the story but incidents illustrated by its author. Howells has also traced this feature in the novels of Henry James. Howells thinks, implicitly, that Henry James is an analyst of persons and situations. So, James believes in exposition of incidents (i.e. impressions of life or air of reality) not in the story-telling. Because \u201cwhen one says picture, one says of character; when one says novel, one says of incident \u2026 What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is not of character?\u201d (AF 69). Besides making a distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, he also makes a distinction between interesting and uninteresting novels. The interesting novels untie the unseen realities contained in the experience. A typical selection, an inclusive selection, of incidents exposes the impression of life. In that sense, the novel competes with life. The interesting novels are products of a mind that is far from sophisticated artistry, and near to \u201cconscious increase of freedom\u201d, to a skill to know the taste of contemporary readers that may expose the world.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      James compares the narrative arts of Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) with Ivan Turg\u00e9nieff for exemplifying what he called interesting and uninteresting narration. He compares so as to emphasize on the tangibility of contents \u201chidden in the bosom of common things\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      The air of reality (solidity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel \u2014the merit in which all its other merits (including that conscious moral purpose of which Mr. Besant speaks) helplessly and submissively depend. If it be not there, they are all as nothing, and if these be there they owe their effect to the success with which the author has produced the illusion of\u00a0life. The cultivation of this success, the study of this exquisite process, form, to my taste, the beginning and the end of the art of the novelist. They are his inspiration, his despair, his reward, his torment, his delight. It is here, in very truth, that he competes with life; it is here that he competes with his brother, the painter, in his attempt to render the look of things, the look that conveys their meaning, to catch the color, the relief, the expression, the surface, the substance of the human spectacle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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      Henry James objects to Besant\u2019s idea of story as the soul of novel. He differentiates the story from the novel as one differentiates \u201cthe idea and the form; the needle and thread.\u201d Story is not the novel. It is the idea to the form called novel that is \u201cthe most magnificent form of art\u201d (AF 79). He also objects to the concept of \u201cfiction without adventure.\u201d He interprets romance to its literal meaning i.e. adventure, mystery, wonder, strangeness, and sensuousness, relating it to the novels of R.L. Stevenson, M. Edmond de Goncourt, and George Eliot (AF 81). For Besant the novel of romance damages \u2018moral purpose\u2019 of the novel, but James understands the term in relation to what he has already called \u2018the interesting novel.\u2019 The word \u2018interesting\u2019 is the key to his concept of novelistic art. It serves as the purpose of the novel with the help of which Henry James contradicts Besant\u2019s \u2018moral purpose\u2019 of the novel.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      Henry James emphasizes that the perfection of the novel depends on the liberty of an author and his art of execution. The perfection of art is itself the most interesting purpose. Regarding the English novel, he says that the moral purpose, in connection with societal corruption (Plato has talked of it) and art, is a \u2018diffidence\u2019 or shyness of the author (82). This shyness or diffidence leads to the imperfect art, because, it does not have resultants of individual artistic effort; it does not reflect the openness, vastness, liberty of an individual novelist. A bound author, a shy author, or a diffidence author is an author who is confused of optimism and pessimism, good and evil.<\/p>\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

      \r\n

      He cannot explore the wisdom of the world. The author\u2019s purpose is not to preach or teach but to open choices of how to live humanly. In order to do it, he must be enjoyable, must be interesting. Thus, James justifies that the only aim of the novelist is to write \u2018interesting.\u2019 This intended purpose will itself teach him how to touch the heart and mind of the readers. It is a bit difficult task. It seems easy but it is a difficult one. \u2018To make the art \u2018interesting\u2019 is the deepest quality of the artist. Henry James seems Longinian when he points out that \u201cthe deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer\u201d.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      There is one point at which the moral sense and the artistic sense lie very near together; that is, in the light of the very obvious truth that the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. In proportion as that mind is rich and noble, will the novel, the picture, the statue, partake of the substance of beauty and truth. To be constituted of such elements is, to my vision, to have purpose enough.<\/p>\r\n \r\n

      With his freedom, an author can produce that truth which is common to everyone\u2019s perception. Recognition of this perception increases the charm of a work of art. That is why, the only moral purpose of an author is to express true account of \u201cimpressions of life\u201d. In his words: \u201cthe only condition that I can think of attaching to the composition of the novel is, as I have already said, that it be interesting<\/em>. This freedom is a splendid privilege, and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it\u201d (AF 84). Thus, Henry James\u2019s \u201cArt of Fiction\u201d maybe enumerated as below:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

        \r\n \t
      1. Art of painting and art of fiction are two different genres of art because the former is more scientific and destined than the later one.<\/li>\r\n \t
      2. Art is not sufficient in itself. Artistry is neither a divine gift nor an inspired one. It is the result of innumerable attempts with liberty by the author. The author\u2019s \u201cexercise of freedom\u201d helps him write the \u201cinteresting\u201d novel.<\/li>\r\n \t
      3. An author cannot express all his experiences because experiences are like spider-webs. Artistry of an author lies in identifying the \u201cimpressions of life\u201d and incidents in the experienced or seen subjects.<\/li>\r\n \t
      4. Besant talks about \u201cselection\u201d as an art of the writer concerning the expression of the story whereas James thinks about the \u201cselection\u201d which must be meshed up with freedom of the author to select whatever he wants to make the novel \u201cinteresting\u201d; to select a typical \u201csense of reality\u201d which enriches the subject of fiction(74-75). However, he clarifies that there is no reality that reflects society as it is. He relates the \u201cart of selection\u201d to the selection of \u201cair of reality\u201d from immensity of reality; to pictorial description of the unseen in the seen (i.e. experience); the \u201cpersonal impression of life\u201d; and not all the experiences.<\/li>\r\n \t
      5. \u201cArt is essentially selection, but it is a selection whose main care is to be typical, to be inclusive\u201d. This characteristic of an author carries him away from what Mr. Besant termed \u201claws of fiction\u201d\u2014harmony, perspective, and proportion.<\/li>\r\n \t
      6. He dissolves the classical distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident; and adores what he terms \u201cinteresting\u201d novel. He clarifies that these distinctions are made for the reader\u2019s convenience but do not work where there is a talk of art of fiction as a theory. He relates this idea to the term \u2018romance\u2019 interpreting it as an interesting element in the novels, and thus he appreciates Stevenson\u2019s Treasure Island.<\/em><\/li>\r\n \t
      7. \u201cStory\u201d is an idea that needs a form called the novel. Thus, \u201cstory\u201d is not the soul of the novel, but the presentation of the story is the soul of the artistry of a novelist. Henry James defines plot in connection with character, \u201cWhat is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?\u201d.<\/li>\r\n \t
      8. There is no \u201cconscious moral purpose\u201d of an author to moralize, or to preach the readers. He denies all Evangelical views against art and says that the only purpose of an author is to make his story \u2018interesting\u2019, exposing truth embedded in the so-called truths.<\/li>\r\n \t
      9. It can only be possible when the author uses his liberty freely without any restriction of negative thinking. He clarifies that the art of fiction is related to execution of fiction, \u201cquestions of art are the questions of execution,\u201d it does not concern with issues related to moral or immoral (80-81). \u201cFor many people art means rose-colored windows and selection means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow commonplaces about the province of art and the limits of art, till you are moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits of ignorance\u201d.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

        An artist lives beyond territories of common thinking of the masses which tend to to differentiate one from the other in the name of morality\/immorality; pessimism\/optimism; good\/evil and vice versa. The only thing that is under him, is his art of execution based on exercise of freedom. This freedom is a splendid privilege, and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it. His famous pronouncement for artist concludes \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d:<\/p>\r\n \r\n

        All life belongs to you, and don't listen either to those who would shut you up into corners of it and tell you that it is only here and there that art inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that this heavenly messenger wings her way outside of life altogether, breathing a superfine air and turning away her head from the truth of things. There is no impression of life in it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
        you can view video on Henry James: The Art of Fiction<\/strong><\/td>\r\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n \r\n

        Reference<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n

        \r\n
          \r\n \t
        1. Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888); Essays in London and Elsewhere <\/em>(I893); Notes on Novelists <\/em>(1914); Views and Reviews <\/em>(I908); Notes and Reviews <\/em>(1921); The Future of the Novel <\/em>(I956) ; American Essays <\/em>(I956); Literary Reviews and Essays <\/em>(1957)<\/li>\r\n \t
        2. Besant, Walter and Henry James: On the Art of Fiction<\/em>. Cupples & Hurg. 1984. http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/cu31924027192941 Web.<\/li>\r\n \t
        3. Blackmur, R. P. Introduction. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces<\/em>. New York. I934. pp. 7-8.<\/li>\r\n \t
        4. Hagberg, G. L. Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary\u00a0<\/em>Knowledge<\/em>. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.<\/li>\r\n \t
        5. Spilka, Mark. \u201cHenry James and Walter Besant: Art of Fiction Controversy\u201d http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1345427<\/li>\r\n \t
        6. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1817), Biographia Literaria<\/em>, 2 vols, ed. J. Shawcross (1917), Oxford: OUP.<\/li>\r\n \t
        7. Dupee, F.W. ed. \"On Henry James\" (I9I8), in The Question of Henry James <\/em>New York. I945. pp. 109-110.<\/li>\r\n \t
        8. James. Henry, French Poets and Novelists <\/em>(I878) available at www.guttenberg.org Web.<\/li>\r\n \t
        9. ---\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Letters of Henry James<\/em>. Selected and Edited by Percy Lubbock, Vol. I. New York, Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons. 1920. View online: http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/38776\/38776-h\/38776-h.htm#page_152\u00a0Walter Besant and Henry James: On the Art of Fiction <\/em>(Hereafter AF) 3-5<\/li>\r\n \t
        10. ---\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hawthorne <\/em>(I879)<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
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          Objectives<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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          This chapter aims at elucidating Henry James\u2019s essay \u201cThe Art of Fiction,\u201d published in Longman\u2019s Magazine 4 (1884) and reprinted in Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888). The chapter also discusses James\u2019s assumptions for which he criticizes Mr. Walter Besant\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d (1884). Henry James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d is a reply to Mr. Walter Besant\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          Besant\u2019s ethical views of writing fiction inspired many of his contemporary fiction-writers, critics, and reviewers. Henry James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d is one of the parts of that debate. It presents realism as a great tool to express what James called \u201cimpression of life.\u201d There are two parts in this module. The first part presents Henry James as critic of Novelistic Art and the second part elucidates his \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d Walter Besant and Henry James: On the Art of Fiction<\/em>.<\/p>\n

          Part I<\/strong><\/p>\n

          Henry James as Critic of Novelistic Art<\/strong><\/p>\n

          \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

          Henry James (1843\u20131916) was a British-American novelist and critic. He remained an artistic- realist till the end. His famous novels were published between 1901-1914 (the death of Victoria and the beginning of World War I). Since King Edward VII reigned from 1901 to 1910, the period is also called the Edwardian Period in English Literature. Besides writing novels based on observed lives of the Americans and the English, Henry James wrote many critical notes on writers and propagandists. Martha Nussbaum has rightly remarked that James\u2019s The\u00a0<\/em>Ambassadors <\/em>challenged the conception of rule-dominated moral reasoning. (No\u00ebl Carroll \u201cArt and the Moral Realm\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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          In this module Henry James\u2019s works are critically assessed to justify him as a critic. His works of criticism carry various titles: French Poets and Novelists <\/em>(I878), Hawthorne <\/em>(I879), Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888), Essays in London and Elsewhere <\/em>(I893), and Notes on Novelists <\/em>(1914). His Views and Reviews <\/em>(1908) contains his early reviews, introductions, and pronouncements in letters. Some other critical notes, reviews and epistles were published posthumously titled Notes and Reviews <\/em>(1921), The Future of the Novel <\/em>(I956), American Essays <\/em>(I956), and Literary Reviews and Essays <\/em>(1957).<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          As a critic, besides writing prefaces to his novels, <\/strong>Henry James meditated critically on contemporary novelists and predecessors. As a young reviewer, he referred repeatedly to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work. He was fond of reading the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804- 1864). He often used Hawthorne\u2019s work as touchstone to assess awareness of other novelists to hidden realities of societies. His first lengthy discussion of Hawthorne appeared in The Nation <\/em>in March, 1872. He also wrote about Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Balzac, Goethe, Gautier, Matthew Arnold, Flaubert, Maupassant, and Alphonse Daudet. He criticized Beuve for his negative responses to Honor\u00e9 de Balzac .. He criticized Hippolyte Taine (1828-93) for not giving enough attention attention to \u201cthe intellectual climate of our literature.\u201d However, he admires Taine\u2019s essay on Balzac. He admires Balzac and Gautier for their art of representing life and moral responsibility. He liked Matthew Arnold\u2019s idea of high seriousness and moral value and followed\u00a0the theory of criticism of life as an ingredient of the novel. It seems that he formulates his theory of criticism on the observation of Arnold as moral critic. He appreciated Balzac, Flaubert, Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, George Eliot, Miss Harriet Prescott, Wells, Bennett, and Turgenev for their artistic capacities to represent life. He ridiculed A.C. Swinburne, Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde for their futile artistic attempts. He praised the concept of \u201cThe New Novel\u201d for its actual connection with realities and signs of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

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          The critics regard James as a realist because he believes that an artist must have the power of selecting the most suitable sign, mark, incident, or the fragment of an event to exemplify existing society as a whole. In Hawthorne <\/em>he remarks that an artist is not historian but a knower of the original event. He does not open the documents of the events but gives hints. In Notes on Novelists with Some Other Notes <\/em>(1914) he asserts, \u201cArt cannot imitate life, if it does, it becomes a reflection of confusion\u201d (\u201cGabriele D\u2019Annunzio\u201d 275). He differentiates life from art: \u201cLife being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection\u201d(AF) He believes that art is a \u201cchemical process, the crucible or retort from which things emerge for a new function\u201d (LC: 1984. 930) and that the artist is an alchemist who \u201crenews something like the old dream of the secret of life\u201d. In other words, we can say that he includes intentions of both the writer and the reader and their crafts of understanding the world. He does not allow his author to write anything irrelevant to the understanding of the reader. It is with this vision of art that he often maintains distinction between the novel and romance. If romance adheres to adventure, dare, and acts of struggling characters, he accepts it and affirms that it adheres to unnatural things or subject matters. In The Future of the Novel: Essays on the Art of Fiction<\/em>, James\u00a0declares: \u201cLiterature, is an objective, projected result; it is life that is the unconscious, the agitated, the struggling, floundering cause\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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          Henry James thinks that an artist is an alchemist because he knows how to uniform varieties of form, unity, tone and he knows how to create illusion \u2014 the illusion of a world which is akin to our living reality. This reality doubles the charm of art and entertains the reader. This art of the novelist validates his greatness because it produces enjoyment and cheerfulness in the reader. The Artist\u2019s art of creating illusion depends on the power of his art to mirror the signs of realities. Henry James contends: \u201cThe artist should have at least tried his best to be cheerful\u201d (\u201cIvan Turgenev\u201d LC: 997). Art of an artist \u201cmust lift up the reader’s heart\u201d (\u201cAlexandre Dumas\u201d 279). This contention inspires his belief that \u201cLife is dispiriting; art is inspiring\u201d (\u201cAlexandre Dumas\u201d LC: 279). In Essays in London and Elsewhere <\/em>he condemns Turgenev for his gloomy writing; condemns Flaubert for his social and political partiality and for his hatred of the bourgeoisie.<\/p>\n

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          Henry James is one of the greatest masters of modern literature who developed the novelistic art as genre-theory. R. P. Blackmur edited James\u2019s \u201cPrefaces\u201d into one volume titled The Art of the Novel <\/em>(1934) which exemplify how the novel reflects the tints of life. He says in his \u201cPrefaces\u201d to his novels that an art of enjoyment remains after exorcising the sophisticated artistry, imaginative, or factual imitation.<\/p>\n

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          Critics\u2019 Remarks on Henry James as Critic<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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          T. S. Eliot does not consider Henry James a successful literary critic. He says, \u201cHis criticism of books and writers is feeble \u2026 Henry was not a literary critic\u201d (\u201cOn Henry James\u201d 1918; 1945). Eliot acknowledges James as a novelist and remarks in this context that \u201che had a mind so fine\u00a0that no idea could violate it\u201d (1918; 1945). In his essay \u201cArnold and Pater,\u201d Eliot\u2019s concluding remarks justify James as a follower of Art for Art\u2019s Sake and not a realist novelist (<\/span>Selected Essays <\/em>405). However, Ren\u00e9 Wellek in his essay \u201cHenry James’s Literary Theory and Criticism\u201d (1958) neglects Eliot\u2019s bitter criticism and appreciates Henry James\u2019s art of criticism. He elucidates how his works constitute a bridge between the early nineteenth century criticism and modern criticism.<\/span><\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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          Henry James to my mind is by far the best American critic of the nineteenth century who \u2026 is brimful of ideas and critical concepts and has a well-defined theory and a point of view which allow him to characterize sensitively and evaluate persuasively a wide range of writers: largely, of course, the French, English, and American novelists of his own time\u2026All his life he was acutely conscious of the low status and condition of English and American criticism, and the need of a revival of criticism, especially of the novel.<\/p>\n

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          Percy Lubbock (1879-1965) in The Craft of Fiction <\/em>(1921) calls James \u201cthe only real scholar in the art\u201d and considers him \u201cthe novelist who carried his research into the theory of the art further than any other”.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          Morris Roberts\u2019s Henry James\u2019s Criticism <\/em>declares that “no critic has ever gone more deeply\u00a0 into the philosophy of art\u201d (1929 120) R. P. Blackmur appreciates James\u2019s \u201cPrefaces\u201d to the New York edition of his novels as \u201cthe most sustained and the most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence\u201d. Garry L. Hagberg , a professor, philosopher, and jazz musician, studied Henry James in the purview of Wittgensteinian theory of meaning and justified him as a philosophic literary critic in his book Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic Theory <\/em>(1994). Henry James\u2019s critical essays canonized the theory of narrative\u00a0technique, artistry, psychological realism and are still cited in the discourses of M.M. Bakhtin, Gerard Genet, and Frederic Jameson. Frederic Jameson has admired Henry James\u2019s concept of \u201cPoint of View\u201d as a historic act in relation to his interpretation of \u201creification\u201d and \u201ccommodification.\u201d Jameson has disseminated James\u2019s views of fiction with reference to the fictional potent of reflecting the masses (See \u201cThe Vanishing Mediator\u201d in <\/span>Ideologies of Theories <\/em>(2008); \u201cRomance and Reification\u201d in <\/span>The Political Unconscious <\/em>(1981; 2002).<\/span><\/p>\n

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          Part II\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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          Henry James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d and \u201cthe era of discussion\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

          \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

          In \u201cThe Art of Fiction,\u201d Henry James has used the phrase \u201cthe era of discussion\u201d with reference to the then ongoing debate on the art of fiction. In the debate there were chiefly four writers of his time: William Dean Howells, Besant, James, and Stevenson. The root of the \u201cera of discussion\u201d (AF 52) is Howells\u2019s essay \u201cHenry James Jr.\u201d written in response to Henry James\u2019s art of characterization and published in The Century Magazine <\/em>November 1882. The essay set\u00a0 off the controversy for the author\u2019s racial observation of Henry James\u2019s work. In this essay, Howells introduces James\u2019s works in relation with his family background and his personal associations. Howells observes James\u2019s art of characterization and calls him the \u201cartistic-analyst\u201d novelist. He says, \u201cEvidently it is the character, not the fate, of his people which occupies him\u201d (Howells). He also called him an American representative of the Zola school i.e. the school of realism. He Henry James: \u201cannalist\u201d and \u201canalyst\u201d and admires him as a greater novelist than any other of his time. For Howells James does not tell the stories through intricate plots but presents an analysis of characters taken from society. \u201cIn one manner or other the stories were all\u00a0told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist thinks about persons and situations. Mr. James gratifies this philosophic desire\u201d Howells contends.<\/span><\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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          Howells introduced the phrase \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d in a statement regarding the English novel . He says: \u201cThe art of fiction has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray.\u201d Two years later, Mr. Walter Besant, a novelist, a critic and a historian, delivered a lecture on \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d at the Royal Institution in London on 25 April 1884. This lecture inspired many contemporary critics and review writers to speak for and against the art of fiction. On April 26, 1884, an evening newspaper the Pal Mal Gazette <\/em>published a short review of the lecture in the column \u201cOccasional Notes.\u201d On April 30, the Pal Mal Gazette <\/em>published \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d In May, Chatto and Windus published the lecture with the author\u2019s notes and comments. R.H. Hutton published a review of \u201cMr. Besant\u2019s Lecture on Art of Fiction.\u201d In 1891 the New Review <\/em>revived the debate through two symposia, \u201cThe Science of Fiction,\u201d featuring Besant, Paul Barget, and Thomas Hardy, and \u201cThe Science of Criticism,\u201d featuring James, Lang, and Edmund Gosse. In 1895 Henry James\u2019s former friend and the young novelist Vernon Lee, added some relevant ideas in his \u201cOn Literary Construction\u201d published in the Contemporary Review<\/em>. Rob Davidson noted the popularity of the topic in The Master and the Dean<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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          Besant\u2019s essay, subsequently published in pamphlet form, was briefly reviewed by the Pall Mall Gazette <\/em>and the Spectator <\/em>in London, while in the United States the Nation<\/em>, the New York Times<\/em>, and the New York Tribune <\/em>fleetingly noted Besant\u2019s ideas. Besant\u2019s lecture provoked more ripples than waves, but James clearly saw an opportunity; his own \u201cArt of Fiction\u201d appeared in Longman\u2019s Magazine <\/em>in September 1884.<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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          Henry James responded to this current debate with the same title \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d He joined this debate in the Longman\u2019s Magazine<\/em>. He called the very affair \u201cthe era of discussion\u201d to\u00a0 which R.L. Stevenson gave a rejoinder in Longman\u2019s Magazine <\/em>in winter and wrote an essay, \u201cA Humble Remonstrance.\u201d James called Stevenson\u2019s essay a \u201cgenuine rejoinder\u201d in his letter written to Stevenson on December 5, 1884. “The Art of Fiction” was reprinted in Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888). Stevenson’s \u201crejoinder\u201d was included in Memories and Portraits<\/em>. James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d is a response to Mr. Besant views on \u201cThe Arts of Fiction.\u201d James contradicts Besant\u2019s ideas of art of fiction that conform to Belle Letters <\/em>and the training of the artist. Besant is of the view that fiction is one of the Fine Arts. He advances three propositions for it. He says that:<\/p>\n

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          1. Fiction is an Art in every way worthy to be called the sister and the equal of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Poetry ; that is to say, her field is as boundless, her possibilities as vast, her excellences as worthy of admiration, as may be claimed for any of her sister Arts.<\/li>\n
          2. \u00a0It is an Art which is governed and directed by general laws; and that these laws may be laid down and taught with as much precision and exactness as the laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion.<\/li>\n
          3. Like the other Fine Arts, Fiction is so far removed from the mere mechanical arts, that no laws or rules whatever can teach it to those who have not already been endowed with the natural and necessary gifts.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            James\u2019s response to Besant\u2019s \u201cArt of Fiction\u201d establishes a theory of fiction as a literary genre. In the beginning of \u201cThe Art of Fiction,\u201d James states that the novel had never been identified as a literary genre. He said that there was no idea printed or documented that could circulate the\u00a0knowledge of the creation of fiction, could declare rules and methods of reading, understanding and writing fiction. He states that fiction \u201chad no air of having a theory, a conviction, a consciousness of itself behind it \u2013 of being the expression of an artistic faith, the result of choice and comparison.\u201d Moreover, he appreciated Mr. Walter Besant\u2019s setting up a meaningful debate on the theory of novel as an art. However, his opinion is different than that of Besant\u2019s. Unlike Besant, James was fond of reading art as personal impressions of life. Here \u2018personal\u2019 corresponds to what he termed the \u201cauthor\u2019s art of execution\u201d based on \u201cexercise of freedom.\u201d As confessed in his letter to Stevenson, he says \u201cMy pages, in <\/span>Longman<\/em>, were simply a plea for liberty.\u201d After reading James\u2019s \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d, one may conclude that Henry James wanted to see the novelistic art free from classical strains. In 1817, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, despised the reading of fiction calling it a \u201ckill-time\u201d rather than a \u201cpass-time.\u201d He imagined it as a \u201cspecies of amusement\u201d which is nothing but \u201cspitting over a bridge\u201d.\u00a0 Henry\u00a0 James appreciates the artistry of the novelist who represents artistic illusion as real as it was before its conversion in the hands of an artist. This becomes possible only if an artist feels that he has the liberty to write what he feels or whatever he experiences as \u201cpersonal impressions of life.\u201d In this manner, Fiction competes with life. The artist lives beyond petty rules made by Besant in his \u201cThe Art of Fiction.\u201d Henry James\u2019s arguments in response to Besant\u2019s art of fiction maybe stated thus:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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              \n
            1. He believes that art lives upon developing arguments, experiment, curiosity, \u201cupon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints\u2026 Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.\u201d<\/li>\n
            2. Literature should be either instructive or amusing. The most important objective of the author is how to make his writing interesting and catchy.<\/li>\n
            3. Author as artist must realize his power of freedom to feel and execute his feeling after its filtrations. The art of fiction cannot be disowned or cannot be trained or taught.<\/li>\n
            4. He justifies the categories of the good and bad novels: \u201cthe bad is swept, with all the daubed canvases and spoiled marble, into some unvisited limbo or infinite rubbish-yard, beneath the back-windows of the world, and the good subsists and emits its light and stimulates our desire for perfection.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
              \n

              Thinking and its execution belongs to the author. Neither thinking nor its execution can be taught. Art of thinking cannot be imitated nor can it be represented in its actual condition, because the art of thinking lies in innovativeness of an individual. Henry James affirms that \u201cthe old Evangelical hostility\u201d and theories developed under its impression (Platonic Idealism of Art) since the Renaissance have damaged the value of Fiction. He contradicts Besant\u2019s idea of art saying that art includes liberty of the artist. He differentiates a novelist from a painter. The painter knows the scientific materials he uses in the painting whereas a novelist knows his articles or subjects but he has to choose, select, or opt for the subjects of characterization and events that constitute plot\u2014a living plot which tells of an analysis of life; a contrast of the past and the present. The selection of incidents which takes place in day-to-day life also dwells in the space of a writer\u2019s \u201cfreedom to feel and say\u201d:<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              A novel is in its broadest definition a personal impression of life; that, to begin with, constitutes its value which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression. But there will be no intensity at all, and therefore no value, unless there is freedom to feel and say.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

              \n

              The author chooses the form after choosing the facts or subjects, and then he chooses tone and finally executes it for the readers\u2019 pleasure. These qualities of an author make him a novelist. They are the result of his personal effort: \u201cThe execution belongs to the author alone; it is what is most personal to him, and we measure him by that,\u201d Henry James contends. He thinks that the artistry of an author is measured through measuring his art of execution\u2014the result of immeasurable attempts. The art of a novelist is the result of a personal effort\u201d and that is why, art without author is meaningless. Art is not sufficient; artistry of an author produces effect in the art. Artistry is not the subject of divine inspiration as Besant declares in his last proposition but a result of the artist\u2019s personal effort. James emphasizes that the art of fiction lives upon the author\u2019s art of experimental execution: \u201cthere is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant \u2014 no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.\u201d.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              Creativity cannot be taught, nor can it be injected by any other than the writer himself. Art is boundless and the artist has limitless power of execution. Henry James objects to Besant\u2019s idea of the possibility of teaching how to write fiction or how to become an artist. James\u2019s idea of \u201cliberty\u201d contradicts Besant\u2019s idea. In fact, he contradicts all that Mr. Besant attributes to the rules to be followed by the novelist and the subjects he chooses for his novel. He objects to the \u201cprecision and exactness\u201d of \u201cthe laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion\u201d and \u201cconscious moral purpose;\u201d and \u201cIt is almost impossible to estimate too highly the value of careful workmanship\u2014that is, of style;\u201d however \u201cthe most important point of all is the story;\u201d and \u201cthe story is everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              He agrees with critics who believe that fiction ought to reflect Realism. However, his contention about the sense of reality in the novel is a bit different from that of other Realists. For him, documentation of exactness of reality in an artistic manner is not a possible act because of\u00a0immensity and uncertainty of realities: \u201chumanity is immense, and reality has a myriad forms\u201d (64). Social reality cannot be represented as it is found in the society. The filtration of realities is a process of novelist\u2019s art of execution. He also agrees with critics who believe that the novel is an expression of the novelist\u2019s personal experience. However, he thinks, \u201cexperience is limitless.\u201d How can an exact experience be expressed? He clarifies that an experience is like a \u201cspider-web\u201d: \u201cExperience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken threads, suspended in the chamber of consciousness and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

              \n

              An Experience cannot be expressed as it is apprehended. Thus both reality and experience are inexpressible phenomena. On this ground, he discards Besant and affirms that expression of reality and experience lacks \u2018preciseness and exactness\u2019 and that the novel is not the writer\u2019s experience or the result of the seen world but \u201cimpressions\u201d or \u201ctints\u201d of lived experience. For him, impression is the unseen experience filtered from the seen one; it is an implication of an incident (Besant call it \u201cexperience\u201d), a pattern, \u201cair of reality\u201d etc.\u201d The power of the artist lies in the power of writing such traces, \u201cimpressions,\u201d \u201cair of reality\u201d etc. As he says:<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it\u2014this\u00a0 cluster of gifts may almost be\u00a0 said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are <\/em>experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

              \n

              The soul of a novel is not the story but incidents. For James, experience is an incident; and this incident embellishes the novelistic art. This thinking demolishes the classic difference between the novel of character and the novel of incident. James thinks that the soul of novel is not the story but incidents illustrated by its author. Howells has also traced this feature in the novels of Henry James. Howells thinks, implicitly, that Henry James is an analyst of persons and situations. So, James believes in exposition of incidents (i.e. impressions of life or air of reality) not in the story-telling. Because \u201cwhen one says picture, one says of character; when one says novel, one says of incident \u2026 What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character? What is a picture or a novel that is not of character?\u201d (AF 69). Besides making a distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident, he also makes a distinction between interesting and uninteresting novels. The interesting novels untie the unseen realities contained in the experience. A typical selection, an inclusive selection, of incidents exposes the impression of life. In that sense, the novel competes with life. The interesting novels are products of a mind that is far from sophisticated artistry, and near to \u201cconscious increase of freedom\u201d, to a skill to know the taste of contemporary readers that may expose the world.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              James compares the narrative arts of Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) with Ivan Turg\u00e9nieff for exemplifying what he called interesting and uninteresting narration. He compares so as to emphasize on the tangibility of contents \u201chidden in the bosom of common things\u201d.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              The air of reality (solidity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel \u2014the merit in which all its other merits (including that conscious moral purpose of which Mr. Besant speaks) helplessly and submissively depend. If it be not there, they are all as nothing, and if these be there they owe their effect to the success with which the author has produced the illusion of\u00a0life. The cultivation of this success, the study of this exquisite process, form, to my taste, the beginning and the end of the art of the novelist. They are his inspiration, his despair, his reward, his torment, his delight. It is here, in very truth, that he competes with life; it is here that he competes with his brother, the painter, in his attempt to render the look of things, the look that conveys their meaning, to catch the color, the relief, the expression, the surface, the substance of the human spectacle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

              \n

              Henry James objects to Besant\u2019s idea of story as the soul of novel. He differentiates the story from the novel as one differentiates \u201cthe idea and the form; the needle and thread.\u201d Story is not the novel. It is the idea to the form called novel that is \u201cthe most magnificent form of art\u201d (AF 79). He also objects to the concept of \u201cfiction without adventure.\u201d He interprets romance to its literal meaning i.e. adventure, mystery, wonder, strangeness, and sensuousness, relating it to the novels of R.L. Stevenson, M. Edmond de Goncourt, and George Eliot (AF 81). For Besant the novel of romance damages \u2018moral purpose\u2019 of the novel, but James understands the term in relation to what he has already called \u2018the interesting novel.\u2019 The word \u2018interesting\u2019 is the key to his concept of novelistic art. It serves as the purpose of the novel with the help of which Henry James contradicts Besant\u2019s \u2018moral purpose\u2019 of the novel.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              Henry James emphasizes that the perfection of the novel depends on the liberty of an author and his art of execution. The perfection of art is itself the most interesting purpose. Regarding the English novel, he says that the moral purpose, in connection with societal corruption (Plato has talked of it) and art, is a \u2018diffidence\u2019 or shyness of the author (82). This shyness or diffidence leads to the imperfect art, because, it does not have resultants of individual artistic effort; it does not reflect the openness, vastness, liberty of an individual novelist. A bound author, a shy author, or a diffidence author is an author who is confused of optimism and pessimism, good and evil.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

              \n

              He cannot explore the wisdom of the world. The author\u2019s purpose is not to preach or teach but to open choices of how to live humanly. In order to do it, he must be enjoyable, must be interesting. Thus, James justifies that the only aim of the novelist is to write \u2018interesting.\u2019 This intended purpose will itself teach him how to touch the heart and mind of the readers. It is a bit difficult task. It seems easy but it is a difficult one. \u2018To make the art \u2018interesting\u2019 is the deepest quality of the artist. Henry James seems Longinian when he points out that \u201cthe deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer\u201d.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              There is one point at which the moral sense and the artistic sense lie very near together; that is, in the light of the very obvious truth that the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. In proportion as that mind is rich and noble, will the novel, the picture, the statue, partake of the substance of beauty and truth. To be constituted of such elements is, to my vision, to have purpose enough.<\/p>\n

               <\/p>\n

              With his freedom, an author can produce that truth which is common to everyone\u2019s perception. Recognition of this perception increases the charm of a work of art. That is why, the only moral purpose of an author is to express true account of \u201cimpressions of life\u201d. In his words: \u201cthe only condition that I can think of attaching to the composition of the novel is, as I have already said, that it be interesting<\/em>. This freedom is a splendid privilege, and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it\u201d (AF 84). Thus, Henry James\u2019s \u201cArt of Fiction\u201d maybe enumerated as below:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

                \n
              1. Art of painting and art of fiction are two different genres of art because the former is more scientific and destined than the later one.<\/li>\n
              2. Art is not sufficient in itself. Artistry is neither a divine gift nor an inspired one. It is the result of innumerable attempts with liberty by the author. The author\u2019s \u201cexercise of freedom\u201d helps him write the \u201cinteresting\u201d novel.<\/li>\n
              3. An author cannot express all his experiences because experiences are like spider-webs. Artistry of an author lies in identifying the \u201cimpressions of life\u201d and incidents in the experienced or seen subjects.<\/li>\n
              4. Besant talks about \u201cselection\u201d as an art of the writer concerning the expression of the story whereas James thinks about the \u201cselection\u201d which must be meshed up with freedom of the author to select whatever he wants to make the novel \u201cinteresting\u201d; to select a typical \u201csense of reality\u201d which enriches the subject of fiction(74-75). However, he clarifies that there is no reality that reflects society as it is. He relates the \u201cart of selection\u201d to the selection of \u201cair of reality\u201d from immensity of reality; to pictorial description of the unseen in the seen (i.e. experience); the \u201cpersonal impression of life\u201d; and not all the experiences.<\/li>\n
              5. \u201cArt is essentially selection, but it is a selection whose main care is to be typical, to be inclusive\u201d. This characteristic of an author carries him away from what Mr. Besant termed \u201claws of fiction\u201d\u2014harmony, perspective, and proportion.<\/li>\n
              6. He dissolves the classical distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident; and adores what he terms \u201cinteresting\u201d novel. He clarifies that these distinctions are made for the reader\u2019s convenience but do not work where there is a talk of art of fiction as a theory. He relates this idea to the term \u2018romance\u2019 interpreting it as an interesting element in the novels, and thus he appreciates Stevenson\u2019s Treasure Island.<\/em><\/li>\n
              7. \u201cStory\u201d is an idea that needs a form called the novel. Thus, \u201cstory\u201d is not the soul of the novel, but the presentation of the story is the soul of the artistry of a novelist. Henry James defines plot in connection with character, \u201cWhat is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?\u201d.<\/li>\n
              8. There is no \u201cconscious moral purpose\u201d of an author to moralize, or to preach the readers. He denies all Evangelical views against art and says that the only purpose of an author is to make his story \u2018interesting\u2019, exposing truth embedded in the so-called truths.<\/li>\n
              9. It can only be possible when the author uses his liberty freely without any restriction of negative thinking. He clarifies that the art of fiction is related to execution of fiction, \u201cquestions of art are the questions of execution,\u201d it does not concern with issues related to moral or immoral (80-81). \u201cFor many people art means rose-colored windows and selection means picking a bouquet for Mrs. Grundy. They will tell you glibly that artistic considerations have nothing to do with the disagreeable, with the ugly; they will rattle off shallow commonplaces about the province of art and the limits of art, till you are moved to some wonder in return as to the province and the limits of ignorance\u201d.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                An artist lives beyond territories of common thinking of the masses which tend to to differentiate one from the other in the name of morality\/immorality; pessimism\/optimism; good\/evil and vice versa. The only thing that is under him, is his art of execution based on exercise of freedom. This freedom is a splendid privilege, and the first lesson of the young novelist is to learn to be worthy of it. His famous pronouncement for artist concludes \u201cThe Art of Fiction\u201d:<\/p>\n

                 <\/p>\n

                All life belongs to you, and don’t listen either to those who would shut you up into corners of it and tell you that it is only here and there that art inhabits, or to those who would persuade you that this heavenly messenger wings her way outside of life altogether, breathing a superfine air and turning away her head from the truth of things. There is no impression of life in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
                you can view video on Henry James: The Art of Fiction<\/strong><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

                 <\/p>\n

                Reference<\/strong><\/p>\n

                \n
                  \n
                1. Partial Portraits <\/em>(1888); Essays in London and Elsewhere <\/em>(I893); Notes on Novelists <\/em>(1914); Views and Reviews <\/em>(I908); Notes and Reviews <\/em>(1921); The Future of the Novel <\/em>(I956) ; American Essays <\/em>(I956); Literary Reviews and Essays <\/em>(1957)<\/li>\n
                2. Besant, Walter and Henry James: On the Art of Fiction<\/em>. Cupples & Hurg. 1984. http:\/\/www.archive.org\/details\/cu31924027192941 Web.<\/li>\n
                3. Blackmur, R. P. Introduction. The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces<\/em>. New York. I934. pp. 7-8.<\/li>\n
                4. Hagberg, G. L. Meaning and Interpretation: Wittgenstein, Henry James, and Literary\u00a0<\/em>Knowledge<\/em>. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.<\/li>\n
                5. Spilka, Mark. \u201cHenry James and Walter Besant: Art of Fiction Controversy\u201d http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1345427<\/li>\n
                6. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1817), Biographia Literaria<\/em>, 2 vols, ed. J. Shawcross (1917), Oxford: OUP.<\/li>\n
                7. Dupee, F.W. ed. “On Henry James” (I9I8), in The Question of Henry James <\/em>New York. I945. pp. 109-110.<\/li>\n
                8. James. Henry, French Poets and Novelists <\/em>(I878) available at www.guttenberg.org Web.<\/li>\n
                9. —\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Letters of Henry James<\/em>. Selected and Edited by Percy Lubbock, Vol. I. New York, Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons. 1920. View online: http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/38776\/38776-h\/38776-h.htm#page_152\u00a0Walter Besant and Henry James: On the Art of Fiction <\/em>(Hereafter AF) 3-5<\/li>\n
                10. —\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hawthorne <\/em>(I879)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"menu_order":14,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["dr-shashi-khurana"],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[58],"license":[],"class_list":["post-124","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-dr-shashi-khurana"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/124\/revisions\/332"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/124\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in\/engp10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}