Re-reading for the Plot: The Erotics of Uncertainty and Readers’ “Re-vision” in The Golden Bowl

Abstract

Abstract:Analyzing key passages of psychological narration in The Golden Bowl through a phenomenological lens, this essay identifies features of James’s notoriously “difficult” late style that generate uncertainty about what is being represented, leading to re-reading. It considers how this re-reading participates in the events of the narrative, arguing that the novel’s storytelling progresses not only when readers finally “understand” a sentence or passage, but also in prior periods of confusion or disorientation. It proposes that the experience of “narrative uncertainty” (related to, but distinct from “narrative desire”) can be an important site of narrative formation in James’s later fiction.