Art of Fiction by Henry James - Critical Study

 Art of Fiction by Henry James

• A critical essay
• By Henry James
• Published in 1884 in Longman's Magazine
• Rebuttal to "Fiction as One of the Fine Arts"

 

In The Art of Fiction, James disagrees with Besant’s assertions that plot is more important than characterization, that fiction must have a “conscious moral purpose,” and that experience and observation outweigh imagination as creative tools. James argues against these restrictive rules for writing fiction, responding that “no good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind.”

 

James states three points:

1. "Fiction is an Art in every way worthy to be called the sister and the equal of the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Music, and Poetry"

2. Art which, like them, is governed and directed by general laws; and that these laws may be laid down and taught with as much precision and exactness as the laws of harmony, perspective, and proportion.

3. Fiction is so far removed from the mere mechanical arts, that no laws or rules whatever can teach it to those who have not already been endowed with the natural and necessary gifts.

 

• What is Fiction?

Fiction, literature created from the imagination, not presented as fact. The word is from the Latin "fictiō", “the act of making, fashioning, or molding.”

 

• What about "Art of Fiction?"

James Henry:

• "The Art of Fiction" is Henry James's attempt to rebuke the claims made in Sir Walter Besant's lecture "Fiction as One of the Fine Arts."
•  James argues that while it's true that writers should write what they know, this does not pigeonhole them into only writing about what they themselves have done from their own perspective. Instead, writers are a collection of their own experiences, varied and complicated, and so their works can hold many facets of the world and still be true to the authors' own experiences.

• James agrees that characters must be understandable and relatable, but instead of suggesting that this requires a description of a character's facial hair, he argues that there are myriad ways to describe a character that will make them believable to an audience.

James goes on to explore creating a work of fiction and how they fail or succeed depending on certain qualities in a writer. James agrees with Besant in general ways.

 

 James, on the other hand, feels that a story must be interesting and that a set of rules dictating what constitutes a moral storyline remove the art from the story. A true artist will not be able to create an interesting story without imbibing morals into it.

 

James closes the essay by encouraging writers to stay true to themselves and their vision and to worry less about following rules and more about creating art. He suggests they do what feels, looks, and sounds real rather than what feels, looks, or sounds right.

 

Walter Bessant:

• Besant argued that fiction required both talent and the following of certain rules that govern the creation of an appropriate piece. It's the second point that James disagrees with, as he sets out to prove in his essay.
• Besant tries to limit what an author can experience and one must write from experience.
• Besant dictates that characters should be clearly illustrated, and he goes on to create a list of rules that designate clear illustration.
• The story, Besant argues, must have a moral principle.

 

Walter Besant’s The Art of Fiction (1884), from where James initially took his title, and its insistence on the novel as an ‘Art’ which is ‘governed and directed by general laws’ (Besant 1884: 3). James was to go much further than this in a letter to the English novelist H. G. Wells (1866–1946), arguing there that ‘it is art that makes life’ (1915: 770). 

James is less interested in ‘reality’, much more in the ‘air of reality’ (1884: 53). Part of the reason for these complications is James’s belief that ‘a novel ought to be artistic’ (1884: 47) as well as a representation of life. In this essay, as Mark Spilka has argued, James began ‘an adventure of immense importance to the novel’s history’ (1977: 208). The very title of James’s essay begins his campaign on its behalf: ‘art’ and ‘fiction’, often seen at odds with each other, are placed side by side here.