The Other Figure in the Carpet: Narrative Voice as an Indicator of Bourdieuian Heteronomy in Henry James's 'The Ambassadors'

The thesis uses a bipartite methodology that combines Gérard Genette's narratological paradigm and Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural fields to offer a new reading of narrative voice in Henry James's The Ambassadors. It uses Bourdieu to position James within the literary field of late-nineteenth-century Britain. It locates the author in a position between the autonomous pole that signals "art for art's sake" and the heteronomous pole that is associated with established bourgeois values. It identifies James's autonomy and heteronomy at the textual level with Genette's concepts of narrative mood and voice, respectively. It thus illustrates the contextual significance of these narratological elements by identifying them as functions of the literary field. Whereas theorists since Genette have emphasized mood in James by ignoring these contextual factors, the thesis provides a revisionary reading that illustrates the importance of narrative voice within the textual economy of The Ambassadors by using this context-sensitive approach.