The Figure In The Carpet

He is best known for his novel the portrait of a lady first published in 1880.

The figure in the carpet.

The narrator whose name is never revealed meets his favorite author and becomes obsessed with discovering the secret meaning or intention of all the author s works. Henry james 1843 1916 published the figure in the carpet in 1896. The figure in the carpet by henry james. The figure in the carpet is a short story sometimes considered a novella by american writer henry james first published in 1896.

February 4 2013 ebook 645 this file was first posted on. The figure in the carpetauthor. The figure in the carpet is partly about readers and the obsessions they can sometimes develop with writers who intrigue them. He never gave us an interpretation of this story.

It is told in the first person. Problematizing the surface he helps us to see what james calls the primal plan something like a complex figure in a persian carpet fittingly the benjamin franklin professor emeritus at the university of chicago begins with two chapters on his namesake exploring bifocal ben s plea for human providence and his strategy for evangelizing future generations in his new gospel of self improvement. In a gesture of compensation one supposes vereker confides to the narrator that his fictions are all linked by a single idea or scheme that no critic has ever noticed but that is the very secret.