"The novel is older, and so are the young": On the Queerness of Style

Abstract

Seeking to bring together two strands in criticism of Henry James—readings pursuing the anti-mimetic and anti-psychological implications of his style and readings exploring questions of sexuality—this essay asserts that the daunting complexity of James's writing is its queerness: the erotic in his work can be most fully understood when it is considered in linguistic rather than representational terms. The queer potential of the interruptions of intelligibility presented by the late style are brought out by detailed readings of James's anti-mimetic theorization of the novel form in "The Art of Fiction" (1884) and "The Future of the Novel" (1899).