Title: The ambassadors
Subtitle: consciousness, culture, poetry
First published: 1997
Description: The Ambassadors tells the story of a puritanical American who is sent to Europe to rescue his fiance's son from a Parisian femme fatale. But this New England ambassador, while carrying out his diplomatic mission, comes to a new and poignant appreciation of European culture, one expressed in his lament, "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to." Nevertheless, he later rediscovers his innate Puritanism and yet reaffirms his commitment to European mores.

The Ambassadors: Consciousness, Culture, Poetry provides a detailed yet easily comprehensible examination of the literary, sociocultural, and philosophical elements that make this one of James's greatest novels. In perfecting his point of view, a technique modern readers take for granted, James's narrative restriction to Lambert Strether's viewpoint forgoes authorial omniscience yet is astonishingly flexible.

Hocks's introduction to James's working principles of art and consciousness lends special significance to The Ambassadors and greatly augments any reader's appreciation of the novel. Hocks also clarifies James's "unique treatment of a classical philosophical dilemma, freedom and determinism." He elucidates, too, the novel's status as a "consummately executed work of art at the level of structure and figurative language" - drawing out in particular the extraordinary poetics of the prose.

In this study, Hocks explores the literary theories that drove James in his creative endeavors and that are intrinsically linked to every major facet of the novel. Hocks works with contemporary criticism in tandem with the philosophical pragmatism of William James and the polar theories of Coleridge in order to reveal and clarify - not recomplicate - the major strands of this knotty novel.

Written in a direct and engaging style, The Ambassadors: Consciousness, Culture, Poetry is an invaluable contribution to Henry James scholarship and a most helpful resource for readers of The Ambassadors.
Subjects: James, Henry, 1843-1916.
People: Henry James (1843-1916)
LC classification: PS2116.A53 H63 1997