FrançaisConference : National literary fields and European space
The Art of (in) the Novel as a Symbolic Coup d’Etat: Henry James Intersects Paul Bourget
Author/s : Anna De Biasio
In Les Règles de l’art, Pierre Bourdieu redefines the «crisis of Naturalism» in 1880s France in terms of a «symbolic coup d’Etat,» that is to say a set of strategies with which a number of writers and critics – among whom Paul Bourget - claim their right to succeed and impose a new artistic regime. But the metaphor of the symbolic coup d’Etat could be effectively applied also to the act by means of which Henry James turns the novel into a pivot for the creation of a sphere of aesthetic autonomy in the Anglo-Saxon world; notably in the 1884 essay “The Art of Fiction,” James positions himself by reacting, explicitly or implicitly, to several positions in a transnational space of the possibles (Walter Besant, the Victorian novel, British Aestheticism, American Realism, French naturalism). Interestingly enough, 1884 is also the year in which James meets Bourget, starting a significant (especially for the latter) life-long intellectual friendship: Bourget inaugurates his career as «psychologue» novelist openly mentioning James as a «master,» while James regards Bourget as an ally in the search for a novel of intellectual, psychological and moral depth that he sees lacking in France. I propose to investigate the intersecting of James’s and Bourget’s trajectories by highlighting, on the one hand, their positions in their respective literary fields, and on the other, their affinities (and differences) in terms of habitus, position-takings, perception of the space of the literary possibles, choices at the narrative level. My analysis will especially touch on James’s and Bourget’s narrative representation of the theme of art as a site of reflection on the artistic field and the role occupied in it by the artist, as well as on the position of the aesthetic sphere in the social field.
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January 9th-10th, 2009 - Intellectual space in Europe (19th-21st c.)
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