ART MAKING LIFE STUDIES IN HENRY JAMES Format: Paperback

As a European expert on American author Henry James, Professor Sergio Perosa is uniquely qualified to examine James' "international theme"—the meeting and clash of European and American characters, moeurs, and values, his related fascination with Italy and the important role it plays in the confrontation. The essays reveal his surprising view of other writers (such as Tolstoy, D'Annunzio, and Shakespeare), his elaborate and influential theories of fiction, and his farsighted awareness of epochal social and cultural changes at the turn of the 20th Century.

With wide-ranging scholarship, Professor Perosa provides an elegant and enjoyable account of James as not only a master but a first example of Modernism, a precursor of 20th Century writers, and less an enigma than a key to how we live today. As he did a half century ago with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professor Perosa re-awakens contemporary audiences to the glories and intricacies of one of the great American masters.

Sergio Perosa is Professor of English and American Literature Emeritus at Ca' Foscari University, Venice and New York University. An internationally-known essayist and critic, he has edited scholarly and literary journals, and lectured and taught throughout the world. Equally fluent in Italian in English, his expertise extends to major international and Post-Colonial authors of fiction, theater, and poetry. He has edited and translated works by Shakespeare (eight plays, some for stage and television), Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Herman Melville, Robert Penn Warren, John Berryman, William Dean Howells, and many others.