Psychological realism: henry james

James made his most important contribution to realism theory in his essay "The Art of Fiction" (originally published in Longman's Magazine in September 1884), which is regarded as one of America's classic statements of literary criticism. In this essay James proclaims the writing of fiction to be one of the fine arts and examines at length the comparison between fiction and painting (whereas many of Howells's detractors compared his approach to photography). James, like Howells and Perry, regarded the novelist more as a craftsman than as a creative genius. The writer of fiction must meticulously observe, and turn his or her impressions into art. For James the only reason for existence of a novel or short story is that it "represents life." The "supreme virtue of the novel," in his view, is "the air of reality," which he explains as "solidity of specification" (p. 12). That is, the novelist must create a convincing image of life, one that seems as if it might really happen. James also agrees with Perry that the crucial action in a story should be internal. Extending the comparison between fiction and painting he remarks, "A psychological reason is, to my imagination, an object adorably pictorial; to catch the tint of its complexion—I feel as if that idea might inspire one to Titianesque efforts" (p. 19). Here we see James's conversion of realism to something less literal than Howells's model. James advocated and practiced what came to be known as "psychological realism"—a devotion not to the precise reproduction of external detail but to a rendering of the nuances of the inner lives of his characters. However, for all his advocacy of careful observation, he gave at least equal Page 947  |  Top of Article weight to what he called in 1909 the "crucible of the imagination"—a notion not far removed from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "secondary imagination," which "dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate." Thus, James effected a sort of fusion (sometimes identified with impressionism) of the realistic with the Romantic that moved in the direction of twentieth-century modernism.