Painting, Fiction, and “the Real Lapse of Time” in The Ambassadors

Abstract

Abstract:Critics have accounted for the action and style of The Ambassadors by describing what they believe Henry James learned from painting. Contrary to these positions, this essay suggests that The Ambassadors owes much to James’s understanding of a conflict between painting and fiction. This conflict helps to account for the way in which the climax of The Ambassadors unfolds, as well as explicating aspects of the novelist’s style. Key to this conflict is James’s emphasis on the classic distinction between the stasis of visual art and the extension in time afforded in literature.