Articoli
Resumen
According to Paul Ricoeur, the tormented history of realism reflects the paradoxical nature of an impossible enterprise where Henry James stands as an exemplary figure. The ambition to represent life is concurrent with the conventional character of the attempt: freedom and control, artificiality, and (truth to) life are the principles governing James’s fiction. Within the troubled making of the writer’s idea and practice of literary autonomy and ontology, names play a crucial and neglected role, working both at a surface level and simultaneously mirroring the deeper struc- tures of the fictional fabric.