Cover not available

Article published In: English Text Construction
Vol. 14:1 (2021) ► pp.68–93

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

The emergence of mind in Henry James’s notebook material

The case of the tales

 | University of Alicante
Published online: 15 September 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.00043.alv
Abstract
Inscribed in the field of cognitive narrative theory, this paper asks, and attempts to answer, a number of questions about the early emergence of mind in James’s notebook material for his short fiction. These questions essentially turn on the metarepresentational and aspectualizing potential of notebook entries in genetic relation to the finished tales, that is, on their capacity to present the projected storyworld, from its very conception, as a function of the subjectivity of one or several characters in the cognitive role of metarepresentational sources, or else as a dementalised lump of content to be aspectualised later in the process of execution. Analysis of the relevant notebook material yields a polarity between epistemic and contentual entries, and reveals a set of cognitive phenomena based on the alteration or continuity of the primitive balance of sources which allows one to conclude that James’s characteristic concern with the mental dynamics of his narratives, rather than being a compositional addition, was deeply embedded in his earliest fictional projects.
Article outline
  • 1.Points of departure
  • 2.Notebooks and notebook entries
  • 3.The polarity epistemic-contentual: Regularities and contrasts
  • 4.Projecting and realising minds: Five case studies
    • 4.1Source remapping: Altering the balance of sources in the process of execution
    • 4.2Mind-function entailment: Foreshadowing narrative roles in the tales
  • 5.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (35)
References
Anesko, Michael. 1988. Review of The Complete Notebooks of Henry James. American Literature 60(1): 120–124. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bremer, Manuel. 2012. How are semantic metarepresentations built and processed? Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 121: 22–38.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cameron, Sharon. 1989. Thinking in Henry James. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cosmides, Leda & John Tooby. 2000. Consider the source: The evolution of adaptations for decoupling and metarepresentation. In Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Dan Sperber (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 53–107.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Egeth, Marc & Robert Kurzban. 2009. Representing metarepresentations: Is there theory of mind-specific cognition? Consciousness and Cognition 181: 244–254. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gard, Roger (ed.). 1986. Henry James: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gordon, D. J. 1950. Review of The Notebooks of Henry James and The Art of Fiction and Other Essays. The Review of English Studies 1(2): 179–183. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grethlein, Jonas. 2015. Is narrative “The description of fictional mental functioning”?: Heliodorus against Palmer, Zunshine & Co. Style 49(3): 257–284. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hayes, Kevin J. (ed.). 2010. Henry James: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Iversen, Stefan. 2011. States of exception: Decoupling, metarepresentation, and strange voices in narrative fiction. In Strange Voices in Narrative Fiction, Per Krogh Hansen et al. (eds). Berlin: De Gruyter, 125–146.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
James, Henry. 1947. The Notebooks of Henry James, F. O. Matthiessen & Kenneth B. Murdock (eds). Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1970. The art of fiction. Partial Portraits, new intro. by Leon Edel. Ann Arbor MI: The University of Michigan Press, 375–408.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1987. The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, Leon Edel & Lyall H. Powers (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1996–1999. Complete Stories, 51 Vols. New York NY: The Library of America.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labrie, Ross. 1968. Henry James’s idea of consciousness. American Literature 39(4): 517–529. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Margolin, Uri. 2003. Cognitive science, the thinking mind, and literary narrative. In Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, David Herman (ed.). Stanford CA: CSLI, 271–294.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marsh, Huw. 2018. Narrative unreliability and metarepresentation in Ian McEwan’s Atonement; or, why Robbie might be guilty and why nobody seems to notice. Textual Practice 32(8): 1325–1343. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marshall, Adré. 1998. The Turn of the Mind: Constituting Consciousness in Henry James. Madison and Teanek: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London: Associated University Presses.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Palmer, Alan. 2004. Fictional Minds. Lincoln NE: The University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. Social Minds in the Novel. Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Phelan, James. 2017. Toni Morrison’s determinate ambiguity in “Recitatif”. In Somebody Telling Somebody Else: A Rhetorical Poetics of Narrative. Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press, 150–167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven. 1998. How the Mind Works. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rembowska-Pluciennik, Magdalena. 2012. The narrative poetics of mindreading. In Texts and Minds: Papers in Cognitive Poetics and Rhetorics, Alina Kwiatkowska (ed.). Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 57–69.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rimmon, Shlomith. 1977. The Concept of Ambiguity: The Example of James. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosenthal, David. 2000. Consciousness and metacognition. In Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Dan Sperber (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 265–295.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2010. Narratology and cognitive science: A problematic relation. Style 44(4): 469–495.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schneider, Ralf. 2013. The cognitive theory of character reception: An updated proposal. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 24(2): 117–134.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan (ed.). 2000. Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stanzel, F. K. 1986. A Theory of Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Throesch, Elizabeth L. 2017. Exceeding “The trap of the reflexive”: Henry James’s dimensions of consciousness. In Before Einstein: The Fourth Dimension on Fin-de-Siècle Literature and Culture. London: Anthem, 167–194. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wallace, Irving. 1955. The Fabulous Originals: Lives of Extraordinary People Who Inspired Memorable Characters in Fiction. New York NY: Knopf.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
White, Peter A. & David P. Younger. 1988. Differences in the ascription of transient internal states to self and other. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 241: 292–309. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zunshine, Lisa. 2006. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus OH: Ohio State University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Theory of mind and fictions of embodied transparency. Narrative 16(1): 65–92. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue