Cultural Interactions: Studies in the Relationship between the Arts, Volume 21 : Collecting and Appreciating : Henry James and the Transformation of Aesthetics in the Age of Consumption

This book examines the role and the meaning of collecting in the fiction of Henry James. Emerging as a refined consumerist practice at the end of the nineteenth century, collecting not only set new rules for appreciating art, but also helped to shape the aesthetic tenets of major literary movements such as naturalism and aestheticism. Although he befriended some of the greatest collectors of the age, in his narrative works James maintained a sceptical, if not openly critical, position towards collecting and its effects on appreciation. Likewise, he became increasingly reluctant to follow the fashionable trend of classifying and displaying art objects in the literary text, resorting to more complex forms of representation. Drawing from classic and contemporary aesthetics, as well as from sociology and material culture, this book fills a gap in Jamesian criticism, explaining how and why James’s aversion towards collecting was central to the development of his fiction from the beginning of his career to the so-called major phase. Content: Appreciation in the age of consumption. The rise of consumption as an aesthetic revolution Collecting as a modern form of art appreciation The problem of art consumption for John Ruskin -- Henry James's early response to collecting. Henry James and the Ruskinian picturesque Picturesque relics vs. renovated collectibles -- Between aestheticism and naturalism. The aesthete and the naturalist as cultural commodifiers The impossible painting and the ugly statuettes -- The princess Casamassima. Unmasking the naturalist collector: Zola, Turgenev and James A youth upon whom nothing was lost The last sacrifice The extending of one's horizon -- Henry James's aesthetics of desire. Georg Simmel's "value-increasing process" The ambiguities of a fin-de-siecle connoisseur: Bernard Berenson The most exquisite economy: Henry James's aesthetics of desire Appreciation and interpretation -- The spoils of Poynton. The buried bone and the tiny nuggets A hindrance in the quality of the material The method at the heart of madness -- The golden bowl. Rounding off the corners of life Small shining diamonds out of the sweepings of an ordered house The steel hoop and the silken rope.