American Theorists of the Novel - Henry James, Lionel Trilling, Wayne C. Booth (Critical Thinkers)

Why read James, Trilling, and Booth? The answer may not be immediatelyobvious. Writing from the 1860s and through to the early twentieth century, Henry James (1843–1916) is most widely renowned for works such as The Wings of the Dove (1902b), The Golden Bowl (1904), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), and his ghost story, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898). But he also published ground-breaking prefaces to his own fiction and numerous critical essays. Lionel Trilling (1905–75) became well known as a literary critic in a 1950s academic scene dominated by, as we shall see, the ‘New Criticism’ of earlier decades.

Although the work of these three critics emerges from varied contexts, all three share a preoccupation with a set of ethical and moral questions about fiction that subsequent critics have been unable to ignore. Is it possible to have ‘good’ novels about ‘bad’ people? Should it be the function of the novel to make the reader a ‘better’, more socially responsible person?