Literary Allusions in James's Prefaces

Abstract

James's Prefaces New York Edition as the most sustained and . . . most eloquent and original piece of literary criticism in existence with Rene Wellek's belief that, judged as criticism, [they] are disappointing is perhaps see well enough extremes of praise and reservation provoked by James's famous essays on his own work.' Wellek, of course, also maintains that are . . . of great interest student of James's life and career as a writer, but, he contends, actual criticism is rare in and to isolate from James's other work would obscure totality of his critical achievement.2 He therefore integrates his discussion of them into his survey of all of James's criticism. Blackmur's primary purpose was simply describe and analyze Prefaces, show their characteristic organization and variety of critical problems with which they were concerned. And no one, so far as I know, has ever had anything except praise for clarity and lucidity with which he accomplished that particular purpose. But neither Blackmur nor Wellek paid any specific attention literary allusions in Prefaces, scope and variety of writers referred to, function they performed in developing James's own comments, and, perhaps most importantly, their intrinsic worth as literary criticism itself.