The Captured Self: Problems of Portraiture in Henry James's "The Real Thing"
Abstract
Henry James’s “The Real Thing” is a tale about an artist who aspires to become a portrait painter and is frustrated by the tensions between mimesis and interpretation. Exploring the challenges of portraiture, the story sheds light on James’s ambition to reveal the psychology of his characters and capture their private and hidden essence; and on James’s belief that artistic sensibility is informed by experience and memory.
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