Henry James and Hippolyte Taine: The Historical and Scientific Method in Literature

Hippolyte Taine's theory of literature and critical method enjoyed a vogue in America during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Henry James was familiar with Taine's work from the middle of the 1860s on. He usually distrusted but occasionally admired Taine's objective and anal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Comparative literature studies (Urbana) 1973-03, Vol.10 (1), p.25-50
Main Author: Sullivan, Jeremiah J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comparative literature
French literature
Literary criticism
Literary history
Literary style
Novelists
Novels
Scientific method
Ugliness
United States history
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Summary:Hippolyte Taine's theory of literature and critical method enjoyed a vogue in America during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Henry James was familiar with Taine's work from the middle of the 1860s on. He usually distrusted but occasionally admired Taine's objective and analytical method of criticism, his view of the novelist as historian of race, milieu, and moment, his habit of generalization ( particularly as to type), and his emphasis (pre-Zola) on the aesthetic use of scientific method. James followed Taine in his own essay on Balzac, in his use of types in The American, The Bostonians, and "A Bundle of Letters," in his art criticism, in his historical method of criticism in Hawthorne, and in the manner and style of his writing of The American Scene, which was influenced by the "scientific" method of Taine. (JJS)
ISSN:0010-4132
1528-4212