-
"Monstrous Levity": Between Realism and Vision in Two of Henry James's Artist-Tales
- The Henry James Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 28, Number 3, Fall 2007
- pp. 242-248
- 10.1353/hjr.2007.0020
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
This essay traces the pleasures of the text(s) in two Jamesian artist-tales, "The Story of a Masterpiece" and "The Liar." The two tales share similar plots, but are constructed differently. James changes point of view in the later story and, with this formal shift, complicates both representation and the readerly experience of Jouissance. James suspends his texts and his readers between realism and the visionary, opening the possibility of a modern "truth-event."