Henry James entre l'Europe

Aperçus tirés de l'argumentaire du projet de colloque "Henry James's Europe : Cultural (re)appropriations and transtextual relations" (first international conference of the European Society of Jamesian Studies), prévu pour avril 2009 (The American University of Paris) :

. "To have no national stamp has hitherto been a defect and a drawback [Letter to TS Perry, 1867]
. being American : "a excellent preparation for culture" : Americans could deal, more freely than Europeans, "with forms of civilization not their own", "pick and choose and assimilate and in short 'aesthetically claim' their property wherver they found it" [quotation this??]
. "the vast intellectual fusion and synthesis" he dreams of as a young writer.
. the American artist abroad possesses the unprecedented advantage of his "national cachet" [fr. dans le texte donc], "a moral consciousness", an "unprecedented lightness and vigour [unprecendented is the relevant point here : modernity et le relais culturel américain].
. art : "making life" and creating values (replied to HG Wells), "didn't these values [ask the conference organizers : Annick Duperray, Adrian Harding, Dennis Tredy] prove to be at times, as again James enigmatically put it in his NYE preface to The Turn of the Screw, "positively all blanks"?