Earticle

초록

영어

An attempt is made in this paper to analyse Henry James's critique of aestheticism in “The Author of Beltraffio”(1884) in relation to his “The Art of Fiction”(1884) published two months later in the same year. Both works have been misunderstood by some critics as the writings supporting the theory of aestheticism. But James had a determined attitude against aestheticism almost throughout his life. Although James was influenced in his search for form and style by his contemporary French realists as is shown in “The Art of Fiction” and “The Author of Beltraffio,” he criticised them for their lack of serious interest in life itself. Of course it cannot be denied that James shows in these writings a certain extent of sympathy with their arduous endeavours to achieve the art of novel, but his sympathy is at an end at this very point. Mark Ambient in “The Author of Beltraffio” has been misunderstood by many critics as an aesthete, but he is evidenced as a genuine Jamesian artist in this paper. An obsessive aestheticism can be found in the narrator of this work because art precedes life in his ‘art for art' point of view. He shows almost always a Wildean attitude to life and art that can be expressed as a sentence “Life imitates art.” His cold aesthetic stance unintentionally causes the horrible death of an innocent child Dolcino. His cold world of aestheticism lacks genuine feelings and sympathy for other people, and thus destroys life itself. This is the core of the Jamesian critique of aestheticism in his writings on French realists.

키워드

저자

• 조흥근 [ Cho, Hung-Kuhn | 순천대학교 영어교육과 ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  영어영문학21 [English21]

• 간기

  계간

• pISSN

  1738-4052

• 수록기간

  1967~2025

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 840 DDC 820