Welcome back to The Invisible College, my series of literature courses for paid subscribers. The introduction to and schedule for the 2025 season is here. The 2024 archive is here. This episode, of which the first 10 minutes are free, is the first in a 14-week sequence on the American novel. It concerns Henry James’s masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady. We consider the following: Jane Campion’s film adaptation; James’s revisions of the 1881 text for the 1907 New York edition of his works; James’s Preface, with its theory of modernist interiority and female heroism; and the novel itself, with an emphasis on the fine moral distinction it draws between its aesthete-individualist heroes and aesthete-individualist villains.1 Please like, share, comment, and subscribe! The slideshow corresponding to the episode can be downloaded behind the paywall:
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