James’s Criticism of Existing Theories of the Impression, 1872–88

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 1 explores the anomaly that while James was critical of French impressionist painting and literature, he nevertheless made the impression the centrepiece of his representation of the novelist at work in ‘The Art of Fiction’ (1884). It addresses this anomaly by reading some of James’s early art criticism, literary criticism, and travel writing as a remaking of existing models of the impression, arguing that James’s impression combines the best of the French novel’s attention to sensation with the English novel’s attention to reflection. It also places the impressions of James’s criticism in dialogue with those of painterly impressionism. It observes that James attributes as much importance to the making of impressions as to the receiving of them. It thus introduces a distinction, fundamental to the argument in later chapters, between ‘performative’ impressions and ‘cognitive’ impressions.