Open AccessThe Trope of Passage in English Hours
Author(s) -
MarieOdile Salati
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
viatica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2275-0827
DOI - 10.52497/viatica1213
Subject(s) - liminality , modernity , trope (literature) , humanities , art , rendering (computer graphics) , art history , philosophy , literature , aesthetics , epistemology , computer science , computer graphics (images)
This article suggests that the English Hours travel essays written in the 1870s were the crucible in which James perfected his technique of literary representation. Focusing on progress across space and tropes of liminality, the study highlights the presence, as of 1872, of the scenario of ghostly vision which dramatizes the shift from observation to reflection in the author’s fiction. It also shows how the 1877 essays mirror the novelist’s ethical concerns as he was working his way towards a poetical rendering of prosaic urban modernity.