Master, She Wrote: Theodora Bosanquet’s Henry James in Henry James at Work
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Henry James died almost a century ago, but he still has a great impact upon literary studies and critical theories as if alive. Recently, his presence becomes more palpable as the biographical novels about him gain a wide range of popularity. Those novels testify to what Seán Burke calls “the return of the author,” or the resurrection of the Barthesian dead author through readers’ re-interpretation of her or his biographical dimensions. The return of James the dead author, however, already occurred by means of his last and longest-lasting amanuensis, Theodora Bosanquet. In 1924 she wrote a memoir of James, Henry James at Work, based on her working experience as his typewriter for 10 years until he died. Though one of the earliest biographical writings about James, the memoir has not been attracting much scholarly attention except for its being a factual account of the later stage of the Master’s life and career. This essay, borrowing Burke’s insight, proposes to take the memoir as Bosanquet’s readerly attempt to re-construct James’s life and person and resuscitate his authorial being. For that purpose, the essay examines various narratorial strategies that Bosanquet employs to present a less authoritarian and more reader-sensitive image of James and to encourage her readers to conceive multiple personae of James based on their readings of the memoir.
Abstract
Henry James died almost a century ago, but he still has a great impact upon literary studies and critical theories as if alive. Recently, his presence becomes more palpable as the biographical novels about him gain a wide range of popularity. Those novels testify to what Seán Burke calls “the return of the author,” or the resurrection of the Barthesian dead author through readers’ re-interpretation of her or his biographical dimensions. The return of James the dead author, however, already occurred by means of his last and longest-lasting amanuensis, Theodora Bosanquet. In 1924 she wrote a memoir of James, Henry James at Work, based on her working experience as his typewriter for 10 years until he died. Though one of the earliest biographical writings about James, the memoir has not been attracting much scholarly attention except for its being a factual account of the later stage of the Master’s life and career. This essay, borrowing Burke’s insight, proposes to take the memoir as Bosanquet’s readerly attempt to re-construct James’s life and person and resuscitate his authorial being. For that purpose, the essay examines various narratorial strategies that Bosanquet employs to present a less authoritarian and more reader-sensitive image of James and to encourage her readers to conceive multiple personae of James based on their readings of the memoir.
참고문헌 (14)
- Bosanquet, Theodora, "Henry James at Work" (2006), U of Michigan P
- Burke, Seán, "The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida" (1992), Edinburgh UP
- Felman, Shoshana, "Turning the Screw of Interpretation, In Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading: Otherwise", pp.94~207 (1982), Johns Hopkins UP
- Heyns, Michiel, "The Typewriter’s Tale: A Novel" (2005), Jonathan Ball
- James, Henry, "The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces by Henry James" (1934), Charles Scribner’s Sons
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- Jöttkandt, Sigi, "Acting Beautifully: Henry James and the Ethical Aesthetic" (2005), State U of New York P
- Kaplan, Fred, "Henry James: The Imagination of Genius: A Biography" (1993), Sceptre
- Lodge, David, "Author, Author: A Novel" (2004), Viking
- McMurtry, Larry, "Almost Forgotten Women", The New York Time Review, pp.51~52 (2002)
- Rowe, John Carlos, "The Other Henry James" (1998), Duke UP
- Thurschwell, Pamela, "Henry James and Theodora Bosanquet: on the Typewriter, In the Cage, at the Ouija Board", Textual Practice, 1(3), pp.5~23 (1999)
- Tóibín, Colm, "The Master" (2004), Scribner
- Walker, Pierre A., "Henry James at Work", The Henry James Review, 29(1), pp.100~103 (2008)