Abstract

Abstract:

This paper theorizes the representation of Isabel Archer’s subjectivity as complicated by James’s own rhetorical uses of image and text in The Art of the Novel. Using the film theory of Roland Barthes and Rosalind Krauss’s readings of Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills,” this essay argues that moments where Isabel’s representation seems to evoke the formal tropes of portraiture and the realist novel concurrently mark sites of discursive deconstruction that are key to understanding the complexity of representing selfhood.

pdf

Share