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James was a great writer of stories and novellas, and in this class we’ll survey his career using some of his finest shorter texts, taking in both his major themes and his extraordinary stylistic evolution. We’ll begin with his first success, the novella Daisy Miller, one of his first elaborations of the “international theme,” with its collisions between American innocence and European guile. We’ll then read two great stories about the challenges and uncertainties of the artist’s vocation before tackling his classic ghost story, Turn of the Screw, one of the great investigations of corruption of innocence and the question of evil. We’ll end with two stories from James’s magisterial late style, profound explorations of one of James’s most persistent themes: regret over the unlived life.
Note: Please get the 1878 version of Daisy Miller, not the 1908 revision. The text linked below is the one I will be using. For Turn of the Screw, we will be reading the 1908 revised text, which is generally preferred to the earlier version (and, as the original was already written in James’s “late style,” the changes are not major). We will provide PDFs of the short stories.
Schedule: Saturdays, 1:00 – 2:30pm ET
11/7: Daisy Miller (1878 version)
11/14: “The Lesson of the Master” and “The Middle Years”
11/21: The Turn of the Screw
(No class 11/28: Thanksgiving)
12/5: “The Beast in the Jungle” & “The Jolly Corner”
Scholarship applications will be open Monday, October 5 to Monday, October 26.
James was a great writer of stories and novellas, and in this class we’ll survey his career using some of his finest shorter texts, taking in both his major themes and his extraordinary stylistic evolution. We’ll begin with his first success, the novella Daisy Miller, one of his first elaborations of the “international theme,” with its collisions between American innocence and European guile. We’ll then read two great stories about the challenges and uncertainties of the artist’s vocation before tackling his classic ghost story, Turn of the Screw, one of the great investigations of corruption of innocence and the question of evil. We’ll end with two stories from James’s magisterial late style, profound explorations of one of James’s most persistent themes: regret over the unlived life.
Note: Please get the 1878 version of Daisy Miller, not the 1908 revision. The text linked below is the one I will be using. For Turn of the Screw, we will be reading the 1908 revised text, which is generally preferred to the earlier version (and, as the original was already written in James’s “late style,” the changes are not major). We will provide PDFs of the short stories.
Schedule: Saturdays, 1:00 – 2:30pm ET
11/7: Daisy Miller (1878 version)
11/14: “The Lesson of the Master” and “The Middle Years”
11/21: The Turn of the Screw
(No class 11/28: Thanksgiving)
12/5: “The Beast in the Jungle” & “The Jolly Corner”
Scholarship applications will be open Monday, October 5 to Monday, October 26.