A Focus on the "Surrounding Scene": Examining Paris in The Ambassadors

In this article the author, a fiction writer, re-examines James's declaration in the preface to The Ambassadors: "Another surrounding scene would have done so well for our show could it have represented a place in which Strether's errand was likely to lie and his crisis to await him." She argues that no other "surrounding scene" could have functioned "so well" as Paris for the novel's setting. She supports her claims with close readings from the text as well as with references to E.M. Forster, David Lodge, Janet Burroway, and others. Laurence Raw