Scholars vs. Critics: Henry James, The Aspern Papers , and Professional Vocation

Abstract: This essay is centered around Henry James’s The Aspern Papers ; it focuses on James’s role at the intersection of a gradually professionalized literary market place and the beginnings of academic literary study in the late nineteenth century. Both developments are reflected by the conflicted professional identity of the novella’s unnamed narrator who represents a broader shift from old Arnoldian criticism to science-oriented academic scholarship. The essay examines how James began to reflect on the transitional nature of that period in increasingly self-reflexive literary maneuvers through a close reading of the novella and its institutional contexts.