Henry James's Literary Theory and Criticism

Abstract

THERE IS an extreme divergence of opinion, even among presumJ ably sympathetic critics, about stature of Henry James as a T. S. Eliot considers Henry James emphatically not a successful literary His criticism of books and writers is feeble. . .. Henry was not a literary critic. Eliot recognizes that James, in his novels, is a fine critc of persons but denies him access to ideas. In Eliot's paradoxical language, he had a mind so fine that idea could violate it.' On other hand Percy Lubbock in The Craft of Fiction pronounces James the novelist who carried his research into theory of art further than any other-the only real scholar in art,2 while Morris Roberts in a little book on Henry James's declares that no critic has ever gone more deeply into philosophy of art.3 R. P. Blackmur, finally, praises James's Prefaces to New York edition of his novels as the most sustained and I think most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence. Criticism has never been more ambitious, nor more useful.4 Eliot's opinion and that of diverse Marxist or patriotic American detractors of Henry James seem to me quite wide of mark. James to my mind is by far best American critic of nineteenth century who-pace Mr. Eliot-is brimful of ideas and critical concepts and has a well-defined theory and a point of view which allow him to characterize sensitively and evaluate persuasively a wide range of writers: largely, of course, French, English, and American novelists of his own time. But on other hand, exaltation of Prefaces to greatest piece of criticism ever written seems to me extravagant. The Prefaces, as a totality, judged