Discovering Lamb House in 1896, Henry James fell under the spell of the words of Biblical «Wisdom» written on the tower clock of Rye parochial church: «For our time is a very shadow that passeth away». From the young bachelors «angry vow» to «live for himself and turn the key on his heart» in Watch and Ward (1871) to the decisive The Turn of the Screw (1898) and to the final «turning the tables» on «an awful agent» of the Apollo Gallery in the nightmare of A Small Boy and Others (1913), this refined «ambassador» of American letters, sharing some of the idiosyncrasies of Sacher Masoch and Gustave Flaubert Jean-Paul Sartres «Idiot of the family» waged a fantastic fight against neurosis for the mastery of his craft. This study explores the «gems» that spangle the «carpet» of his prose. The latter hints at a secret christology and shines with the desire to fight differently the modern Romains de la decadence depicted in Thomas Coutures famous painting. The myth of the Twins inspired by Jamess relationship with his brother William eventually led him to feel like «the heir of all the ages». Burning some letters to protect his privacy, the expatriate writer (18431916) constructed his uvre to share the sky of the literary world Pleiades, and found eternal rest under the vaults of Westminster Abbey.
Content: Introduction: Towards Westminster Abbey: the Twins Mythical
Eternity Deciphering Europe: Landscape and the Art of Fiction Walter
Pater, Henry James and Freud probing Leonardo da Vincis Family Novel
Passionate Attraction: From Faraday, Swedenborg to Théophile Gautier, Charles
Fourier and Wilde Henry James and Sacher-Masoch: From the Love of Statues
to the Fear of Ghosts Investigating the Victorian Nursery: Jamess
Self-Analysis of the «Frightened Cry-Baby» in the Hands of Dr Skinner The
Solar Myth: Twin Structures: Impulses of Death and Civilization
Anamorphosis and the Secret of Mr Tishbein seen «from the Jolly Corner»
Towards the Grotesque and Beyond: Caricature from Francis Grose to Dracula
A Love of James? Conclusion: «The Heir of all the Ages» in the Pleiades of
the Cultural West: a Symbolic Revolution.
Jean Perrot is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature at Paris University. His main publications include Mythe et littérature sous le signe des jumeaux (Paris, 1976), Art baroque, art denfance (Nancy, 1991), Le Secret de Pinocchio. Carlo Collodi et George Sand (Paris, 2001), Du jeu, des enfants et des livres à lheure de la mondialisation (Paris, 2011). He has edited Les Métamorphoses du conte for P.I.E Peter Lang in 2004.
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