Henry James and the American Realism

Exam Revision from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, University of Cologne (Institut für Englische Philologie), course: Henry James - American Realism, language: English, abstract: Howells and James have often been regarded as cofounders of realism in the USA. Howells regarded the work of James as "character-painting", "a matter of painting what he sees", thus making its realistic quality slightly doubtful, describing James as a romancer. What his favourite character, Isabel Archer, says of personal identity ("Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; on the contrary, it's a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one.") is reminiscent of American Transcendentalism: the issue of free will vs. determinism.