ENG 4936 Honors Seminar: Henry James & Edith Wharton
Sec. 9097
T 6-8  (12:50-3:50)
Professor S. A. Smith
Office: 4348 Turlington Hall        392-6650 x253
Office Hours: R 1:00-4:00

                 
Edith Wharton (1862-1937) first met Henry James (1843-1916) in 1903, but she had tried to meet the man she would later call “Cher Maitre” (Dear Master) on several earlier occasions, during the late 1800s. They would not become good friends until after 1904, mostly because he was a famous author nearing the end of his brilliant career and she was at the beginning of what would become an equally long and brilliant career. In 1900, Wharton sent James a copy of her story "The Line of Least Resistance"; he replied with praise for the story, followed by detailed criticism, which she found devastating. In time, however, she learned to accept criticism as one professional to another, and James became a valued literary adviser to the younger writer. Wharton, notoriously shy, overcame her shyness with James, having discovered that she could talk to him with ease "of the things we both cared about; while he, always so helpful and hospitable to younger writers, at once used his magical faculty of drawing out his interlocutor's inmost self. Perhaps it was our common sense of fun that first brought out our understanding."

The relationship between these two American novelists, both of whom spent years of their lives in Europe, was literary, complex and close. This honors seminar will examine the making of a literary career—specifically, of course, these two careers—in the late 19th, early 20th century through an examination of these two friends, and literary “partners,” but also with an eye on contemporary criticism. For example, in the late 1960's, the French philosopher Michel Foucault, in response to another French thinker, Roland Barthes, posed the question, "What is an Author?" This deceptively simple question about the constitution of an author as a particular and transcendent individual has motivated several rounds of critical debate since the 60s and the effects of the question remain haunting, particularly at a time when the role of the artist—the novelist in particular— is unclear. This course will, then, also be dedicated to exploring how an identifiable, stable, and culturally valuable object called an Author, bearing the proper names "Henry James" and “Edith Wharton” have been produced and maintained. Foucault claimed that preserving the idea of the author as an individual severely limits the field of inquiry, practice and analysis. "The author," he wrote, "is the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning." Do we fear the proliferation of meaning? Where does a cultural object begin and end? What might happen if we let go of the concept of author?

Requirements: Each of you will be responsible for two response papers, a mid-term essay and final research project/essay.

A word to the wise: this is an honors seminar on two major American authors, and therefore the work I am requiring will mimic the work required at the graduate level. The difference? In graduate school, there would be more reading, more criticism, more. So my advice to you is this: if you are at all interested in graduate school, here’s your chance to see what it would be like, in miniature. If, however, reading and writing criticism is of only secondary interest to you, you may want to shop around for something else.

Required Reading: All the books below can be found at Goering’s Bookstore. You will need to have the proper edition of the book, as listed below, in order to a. pursue class discussion and b. in order to have the appropriate additional critical material each offers.

“What is an Author?” (handout) Michel Foucault
    by Henry James:
Portrait of a Lady (Norton edition)
The Europeans (Penguin)
The American (Penguin)
Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction (Bantam Classic)
Wings of the Dove (Penguin)
The Art of Criticism (University of Chicago)

    by Edith Wharton:
Ethan Frome (Penguin)
The Glimpses of the Moon (Collier)
House of Mirth (Norton edition)
The Age of Innocence (Penguin)
The Custom of the Country (Penguin)

I reserve the right to add to or change the required reading in the course of the class, depending on the needs of the class.