Theory to die for: lunging at the arras in Wilde’s the portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889) and James’s 'The Figure in the Carpet' (1896)

In this article I argue that Henry James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” shares remarkable structural similarities with Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr. W. H. Although both works have often been read as parodies of literary critics, they both also toy with the serious possibility that the pursuit of a literary theory might resemble an erotic obsession, and might result in, not the death of the author, but the death of the critic. To better understand the ways in which Wilde and James approach literary criticism in Portrait and “Figure” I consider their shared investment in Shakespeare, who figures in both authors’ work as a larger-than-life exemplar of authorial mastery, while simultaneously functioning as a textual corpus extractable from its author, a space that opens up creative possibilities for the critic. James’s late works on Shakespeare (his short story, “The Birthplace” (1903) and his preface to The Tempest (1907)) reveal a central conflict between James’s devotion to an autonomous artwork and his desire for an all-masterful author. Reading James’s late writings on Shakespeare, in conjunction with the ways his stories about literary criticism prefigure one strand of New Criticism-- Wimsatt and Beardsley’s positing of the intentional fallacy-- can help us understand the apparent paradoxes in James’s relationship to Shakespeare, and in his portrayals of literary critics, and literary criticism

Interview with Ethan Russell

Ethan Russell is a multiple Grammy-nominated photographer and director, who amongst other claims to fame, is the only photographer to have shot covers for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who. Some of his best work can be found in the stunning photography booklet that accompanies the original album Quadrophenia. In this interview, he talks about the process of making the booklet amongst other topics

Interview with Franc Roddam

As well as co-writing and directing Quadrophenia and creating Masterchef, Franc Roddam’s works include the award-winning TV drama Dummy, and BBC documentaries Mini and The Family. Roddam graciously agreed to be interviewed for this book to talk about some of the influences and decisions that went in to making the film

Refusing to give up the ghost: some thoughts on the afterlife from spirit photography to phantom films

No description supplie

Elvis Costello as cultural icon and cultural critic

No description supplie

Henry James and Theodora Bosanquet: on the typewriter, 'In the Cage', at the Ouija Board

Through a reading of James' novella about a telegraph office, In the Cage,I show that James externalizes the possibility of intimate knowledgeof another person through the commercially and materially mediatedtransactions of the telegram. The erotics of the story, in which a young,working-class telegraphist constructs a relationship with an upper-classcustomer through her picture-perfect knowledge of his telegraphing habits,depend on a melding of commercial and sexual transactions which coalescearound the new forms of access to knowledge of others provided by newcommunication technologies and the workers who run them. These eroticsof the technological storehouse are also detectable in James' relationshipswith his secretaries to whom he dictated his work at the end of his life.I compare the mediated intimacy of In the Cage to the extensive automaticwritings of James' final secretary Theodora Bosanquet, a dedicatedpsychical researcher, who, after James' death, spent a great deal of timechannelling him as well as other literary figures. Specifically new forms ofcommercialization of intimacy, with precursors that encompass bothprostitution and paying mediums for seances, begin to gather force withthe revolution in communication technology at the end of the nineteenthcentury creating a new figure, the (primarily female) information worker,whose access to others' minds results in anxieties about the permeableboundaries of individual knowledge

Introduction: Dressed right for a beach fight

The Who’s 1973 album Quadrophenia and Franc Roddam’s 1979 cult classic film based on the album are now inseparable from Mod identity, and in part responsible for the style’s staying power. If Mod as a style has been central to the development of cultural and subcultural studies in Britain, then Quadrophenia-- the album and the film-- is Mod’s canon. Quadrophenia brought Mod to the consciousness of the greater public and the world, and the cult status of the film means that it continues to introduce Mod style to subsequent generations. The introduction to this volume summarizes the articles included in the book, and makes a strong case for Quadrophenia’s continuing fascination

Genre, repetition and history in Jonathan Coe

No description supplie

Literature, technology and magical thinking, 1880-1920

No description supplie