Henry James and the Writing of Race and Nation [Paperback]

An examination of Henry James's work in the context of popular culture, first published in 1996.Mixed Performances describes a new Henry James, who, rather than being paraded as a beacon of high culture, actually expresses a nuanced understanding of and engagement with popular culture. Arguing against recent trends in critical studies which locate racial resistance in popular culture, Sara Blair uncovers this resistance within literature and high modernism. Blair makes a powerful case for reading James with a sense of sustained contradiction and her project absorbingly argues for the historical and ongoing importance of literary texts and discourses to the study of culture and cultural value.Mixed Performances describes a new Henry James, who, rather than being paraded as a beacon of high culture, actually expresses a nuanced understanding of and engagement with popular culture. Arguing against recent trends in critical studies which locate racial resistance in popular culture, Sara Blair uncovers this resistance within literature and high modernism. Blair makes a powerful case for reading James with a sense of sustained contradiction and her project absorbingly argues for the historical and ongoing importance of literary texts and discourses to the study of culture and cultural value.In this study, Blair challenges Henry James' perceived status as the literary figurehead of an impregnable high culture. Emphasizing James' engagement in forms of popular culture (including ethnography, minstrelsy, photography, and journalism), Blair traces the ways in which his writing, steeped in these forms, acted as a force in the forging of racial, national, and cultural identity.Introduction: making a difference: Henry James, literary culture, and racial theater; 1. First impressions: 'Questions of Ethnography' and the art of travel; 2. 'Preparation for culture': Anthony Trollope, the American Century, and the fiction of freedom; 3. 'Trying to be Natural': authorship and the pol[