基本信息·出版社：Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc ·页码：403 页 ·出版日期：1983年05月 ·ISBN：0553210599 ·条形码：9780553210590 · ...
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The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction (Bantam Classics) |
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The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction (Bantam Classics) |
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基本信息·出版社：Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc
·页码：403 页
·出版日期：1983年05月
·ISBN：0553210599
·条形码：9780553210590
·版本：1983-05-31
·装帧：简装
·开本：0开 Pages Per Sheet
·外文书名：螺丝在拧紧及其他小故事
内容简介 Classic tales of terror by the nineteenth-century American writer illustrate his observation of interpersonal relationships.
Book Description
To read a story by Henry James is to enter a world--a rich, perfectly crafted domain of vivid language and splendid, complex characters. Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious American girls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters and charming Europeans populate these five fascinating Nouvelles --works which represent the author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitions of evil that haunt the governess in The Turn Of The Screw to the startling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in The Beast In The Jungle, the mysterious tumings of human behavior are skillfully and coolly observed--proving Henry James to be a master of psychological insight as well as one of the finest stylists of modern English literature.
From the Publisher
To read a story by Henry James is to enter a world--a rich, perfectly crafted domain of vivid language and splendid, complex characters. Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious American girls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters and charming Europeans populate these five fascinating Nouvelles --works which represent the author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitions of evil that haunt the governess in The Turn Of The Screw to the startling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in The Beast In The Jungle, the mysterious turnings of human behavior are skillfully and coolly observed--proving Henry James to be a master of psychological insight as well as one of the finest stylists of modern English literature.
Book Dimension
Height (mm) 180 Width (mm) 120
作者简介 Henry James
Henry James (born April 15, 1843, New York, N.Y., U.S.-died Feb. 28, 1916, London, Eng.) U.S.-British novelist. Born to a distinguished family, the brother of William James, he was privately educated. He traveled frequently to Europe from childhood on; after 1876 he lived primarily in England. His fundamental theme was to be the innocence and exuberance of the New World in conflict with the corruption and wisdom of the Old. Daisy Miller (1879) won him international renown; it was followed by The Europeans (1879), Washington Square (1880), and The Portrait of a Lady (1881). In The Bostonians (1886) and The Princess Casamassima (1886), his subjects were social reformers and revolutionaries. In The Spoils of Poynton (1897), What Maisie Knew (1897), and The Turn of the Screw (1898), he made use of complex moral and psychological ambiguity. The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904) were his great final novels. His intense concern with the novel as an art form is reflected in the essay “The Art of Fiction” (1884), his prefaces to the volumes of his collected works, and his many literary essays. Perhaps his chief technical innovation was his strong focus on the individual consciousness of his central characters, which reflected his sense of the decline of public and collective values in his time.
媒体推荐 Customer Reviews
1.Unnerving Tale Hidden Inside Some Stories in a Flashback, Mar 16 2003
Reviewer: PETER FREUND (CHICAGO, IL USA)
On the surface this is a story about an either haunted or hysterical governess who juggles words with true virtuosity, stringing them into psychologically insightful sentences. But that is all just camouflage, as is the many-layered structure of this tale. When the chips are finally down, the truth emerges, even though it is never explicitly stated --- how could it possibly have been stated explicitly in 1898? --- this is a story about pedophilia and its effects on a ten year old boy. At the core of this tale lies the relationship between the boy Miles and his uncle's servant Quint at Bly, the uncle's country estate. The housekeeper Mrs. Crose informs the new governess that the too-good-to-be-true Miles had been "bad" in the past, he would disappear for hours in the company of Quint who was not only "much too free" but also engaged in "depravity." Sent off to a boarding school, Miles gets expelled for what he tells his classmates presumably about this depravity. When at the very end of the tale the governess confronts Miles about these matters, he appears to expire in the last four words of the tale's last sentence. Yet at the start of the unresolved flashback which this tale represents, Miles may yet be alive as a middle-aged family man named Douglas, who reads to his friends the whole tale as written down by the governess herself.
Is Douglas the grownup Miles? James doesn't tell, but this remains a fascinating possibility perfectly consistent with the rest of this tale. Further conflations of characters are equally well compatible with the "facts." The uncle who lived at Bly and then left his estate at the very time of Quint's accidental death doesn't want to ever again hear of his nephew or to return to Bly. Could it be that it was not Quint who engaged in pedophilia, but that it was the uncle himself who abused his orphaned nephew? In their numerous dialogues the Governess and Mrs. Crose complete each other's sentences to such a degree that one gets the distinct impression that one is dealing with the ruminations of a single character and like Quint, so Mrs. Crose too can easily be removed from the scene. In fact James does just that shortly before tale's end, while getting rid of Miles' little sister Flora at the same time. He sends them to London to visit the uncle. There is one more character, the earlier governess Jessel, whose only role is to impose a certain degree of symmetry to the tale, and to appear in one climactic scene.
Why all these dispensable main characters, why the fireside chat of all kinds of minor characters at the time when the flashback is entered never to be left again, and finally why even use a flashback? I think these are all diversionary tactics on James' part. The central story he tells is so very unorthodox, unnerving and incendiary that he prefers to hide it with great care and great success among all this clutter. As I said, in 1898 he would have been pilloried for openly writing about pedophilia. The challenge of doing so all the same, has resulted in a masterpiece of ambiguity, which still clearly conveys its point. This interpretation of the story is supported by the fact that Benjamin Britten, one of the twentieth century's greatest opera composers, has set "The Turn of the Screw". Britten was himself apparently interested in pubescent boys and pedophilia drives the stories of three of his masterpieces. Based on what has been written about Henry James, he may not have been a stranger to this subject either.
The style of this tale is fascinating. On the one hand it is formal, quite pedantic, quite precious and removed, as if carving itself a much-needed ditch separating the narrative from the reader. It does not grant easy access. On the other hand all those long sentences with big words tend to have a mesmerizing effect that absorbs the reader into the story better than even the most honest and well-meaning informality ever could. There is a certain rhythm and poetic drive to some crucial passages. For instance, as one enters the flashback, the first few pages have the drive of a prose poem or of a symhony. With it James welcomes the reader to his realm. No wonder "The Turn of the Screw" ultimately landed on the opera stage.
2.clear, precise, even-handed stylist, Feb 8 2003
Reviewer: A customer
Henry James wrote in a clear, precise even-handed American style that has not grown stale despite the passage of over 100 years. The two stories that stand out here to me are the two that are usually singled out by reviewers, "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn Of The Screw", the former because of its sensual European atmospherics and the fact that even back in 1900 an American female could be considered overly outgoing or prurient by community standards, even if she was probably just an extroverted American; the latter because James effectively creates the controlled terror of a ghost story involving children at a British greathouse, perhaps a bit like Poe. But the other 3 stories all have something going for them: "The Jolly Corner", is also a ghost story,set in New York; "The Beast Of the Jungle" creates a sense of mysterious suspense within the context of a couple's love relationship, and "Washington Square" is the story of a love relationship forbidden by the girl's
sophisticated doctor father.
