Henry James's Cosmopolitan Spaces: Rome as Global City

Henry James's Rome is a global locus where past and present, Europe and America come together. Representative of classical antiquity, Italian history, the Catholic Church, and Old World aristocracy, it is the site of a variety of cosmopolitan exchanges and provides a quintessential international experience for James's American travellers and expatriates. Key scenes involving classical statues and Roman sites in "The Last of the Valerii" (1874), Roderick Hudson (1878) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881) offer a lens through which to view James's engagement with the Eternal City as the crossroads of transcontinental alliances, cultural politics, literary, and artistic influences.