A Companion to Henry James Studies (review)

312 The Henry James Review It not only describes and explicates an intellectual construct but also becomes an example, in criticism, of that phenomenon. Beidler, thus, promotes himself (or, I should say, his craft) to a primary rank. The art of criticism, Beidler reminds us, ought to be practiced as an art: the art of framing, of creating and providing intellectual contexts and structures. Beidler's prose is clear and rarely inaccessible or convoluted. Frames in James would in fact serve well in advanced undergraduate courses and in graduate courses committed to the practice of criticism. "The world prefaces nature, the book prefaces the world, and the preface, in the same way and for the same reasons, frames the book" (87). As well, the critic frames the fiction and articulates the effects upon living readers made by the work of art. Veteran readers will be amused, perhaps, by the resurgence of interest in the function of the frame. This time, however, it is clear that the frame is, for critics, the center of the art, "and the frame is necessitated by a lack in the work" (50). Recent literary criticism has been largely conducted upon the consideration of what is missing (hence the language of absence, margins, silences), and paradigmatic shifts may be expected within the spaces opened up when critical attention is diverted. Millennial eyes turn anxiously toward the borders of old certainties. Daniel Mark Fogel, ed. A Companion to Henry James Studies. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1993. xxii + 545 pp. $79.95. By Rayburn S. Moore, University of Georgia A collection of essays by various hands (mostly authors of books on James in the 1980s) written especially for this project and covering James's criticism and theory, fiction, and nonfiction, the volume, according to Daniel Fogel in his introduction, is viewed as a "companion" to Robert L. Gale's Henry James Encyclopedia and is "intended to provide both advanced students and scholars with a reference guide to Henry James studies in all—or nearly all—of the rich and multivariegated dimensions of the field" (xiii). At the same time, the editor readily admits that "no single volume, even one as ambitious" as the one under review, "can hope to do justice" to "the variety of critical and scholarly approaches with which Henry James has been treated in recent years" (xv). In addition to the text, there are two appendices containing lists of James's "Principal Publications in Book Form" and "Landmarks of Henry James Criticism"; finally, there is a bibliography of works cited that serves to reduce repetition and the length of citation in the essays themselves. The first section of the Companion is devoted to "Criticism and Theory" and begins with a perceptive consideration by Richard A. Hocks of writing on James from William Dean Howells to 1988, with two additional paragraphs of brief Book Reviews 313 references to works published in 1989 and 1990. Other essays cover James as critic (Sarah B. Daugherty), his theory of fiction and its legacy (Daniel R. Schwarz), the prefaces (Thomas M. Leitch), and a thoughtful discussion of James as "critical theorist" in which John Carlos Rowe treats a spectrum of judgments that include Marxist interpretation (even though "James was no Marxist"), deconstructive views, feminist opinions, and New Historicist explanations in language generally available to readers who might otherwise cringe at the jargon frequently employed by critics using such approaches. The second part of the collection deals with the fiction and includes essays on "The Early Years" (James W. Tuttleton), "The Middle Years" (James W. Gargano), "The Experimental Period" (Jean Frantz Blackall), "The Later Fiction " (Virginia C. Fowler), and considerations of the short story (Maqbool Aziz), James among some of his European peers (Philip M. Weinstein), a "formalist feminist view" of "closure" in James's fiction (Mary Doyle Springer), the "art" in the fiction (Adeline R. Tintner), and James's revisions (Anthony J. Mazzella). All of these contain helpful comments and analyses of scholarship and criticism on the topics at hand, but Fowler's treatment of the novels of the major phase is particularly illuminating not only for her handling of the pertinent commentary itself but also for her own insights...