JAMES’S CONCEPTION OF NOVELISTIC TRUTH AND HIS AESTHETIC OF FICTION

ABSTRACT. On Davidson’s reading, for James, the writing of fiction and literary criticism is essentially a moral practice. Wakana illustrates how James’s realism reflects life’s fictional quality. Otten points out that James identifies bodily ambiguity with rhetorical ambiguity. Miller contends that society in The Wings of the Dove is a reciprocal system of working and being worked. (pp. 99–103)