Reader and critic writ large

Abstract

We shall now look at the critic’s role as it emerges from James’s The Art of the Novel, although references to the reader and critic are few and woeful. ‘The vain critic’s quarrel’ we have already cited, as well as the perceptive criticism which is ‘too little of this world’. But particularly sad is this fantasy of Paradise:

The artist may of course, in wanton moods, dream of some Paradise (for art) where the direct appeal to the intelligence might be legalised; for to such extravagances as these his yearning mind can scarce hope ever completely to close itself. The most he can do is to remember they are extravagances. (p. 54)