Henry James, Fredric Jameson, and the Social Art of Sculpture

Examining the figure of Gloriani, this article argues that comprehending the art of fiction, as James both practiced and theorized it, requires grasping the novelist’s evolving relationship to the sculptural arts. Fredric Jameson’s writings, especially his brief but suggestive account of sculptor Duane Hanson, provide an analytical framework for reading James, while James’s theory of relationality casts Jameson’s interpretive method in a new light.