Beta
225540

The Power of Place: Aesthetic and Semiotic Function of Landscape in Henry James' The Europeans - An Interdisciplinary Study

Article

Last updated: 25 Dec 2024

Subjects

-

Tags

Humanities

Abstract

Recently, due to the lockdown of the whole world after the spread of Covid 19, the significance of spatiality and the dynamic relations among space, place, and culture has now become an important approach to the humanities. In the discourse of postmodernism, place appears as a key concept in literary studies to determine the cultural dimensions of the human experience. This paper is an attempt to bring to focus the importance of place in culture-oriented literary texts. The most suitable ones for the purpose of this study are those that deal with the “international theme" of the cultural conflict between the Old and the New Worlds; one of the major themes which are found in the works of the great 19th century American novelist Henry James. He deals in his novels with a variety of cultural, social, and moral issues through stories of intercultural encounters between American and European characters. Thus, this paper studies one of his least appreciated novels, The Europeans (1878), to show that the greatness of the text lies in the aesthetic and semiotic power of its landscape which acts as an interactive medium for expressing emotions and functions as a process of signification conditioned by the American culture.

DOI

10.21608/buijhs.2022.225540

Keywords

Henry James, culture, Landscape, Objective Correlative, semiotics

Authors

First Name

Nashwa

Last Name

Elshamy

MiddleName

Mohammad Saad

Affiliation

Department of English language, literature, and simultaneous interpretation, Faculty of Humanities, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt

Email

dr_nashwa.elshamy@yahoo.com

City

First Settlement

Orcid

-

Volume

4

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

31372

Issue Date

2022-06-01

Receive Date

2021-04-02

Publish Date

2022-01-01

Page Start

35

Page End

63

Print ISSN

2314-8802

Online ISSN

2314-8810

Link

https://buijhs.journals.ekb.eg/article_225540.html

Detail API

https://buijhs.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=225540

Order

2

Type

Original research articles

Type Code

1,076

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Beni-Suef University International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Link

https://buijhs.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

The Power of Place: Aesthetic and Semiotic Function of Landscape in Henry James' The Europeans - An Interdisciplinary Study

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023