HENRY JAMES' AMERICAN AND AMERICAN MILLIONAIRES

Authors : Marion Taylor

Pages : 78-85

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Publication Date : 2014-08-17

Article Type : Research

Abstract :Critics have long been fond of describing HenJ.1Y J amcs' novel, The American, as a fairy tale. A myth, Leon Edel calls it, that critic who has become one of the autlhorities on Henry J amcs. Edel begins his discussion of the myth by finding a special significance in the name of Christopher Newman, the protagonist, who is an American millionaire in his late thirties, who woes but does not win a high-born lady in Paris. Says Edel: The last name explains itself, the frat requires very little historical knowledge to be identified. The novelist wu inter· twining two related myths the - myth of a Q>lumbul, the explorer, or of a Gulliver, studying strange countries and comparing their customs with thole of bi& own, that myth which had become mixed up with Fenimore O>oper'a Natty Bumppo and the Indians. The second myth was that of the new egalitarian society where there were (as Goethe bad said in his poem about America) no castles and no rulnl, no symbels of serfdom and feudalism.1 Edel then adds to the myth of which Cluistophcr ewman i the protagonist.
Keywords : HENRY, JAMES, AMERICAN