"The Art of Fiction" and Other Critical Writings
What is the nature and function of fiction according to Henry James in his the art of fiction?
Nature and function of fiction by hemgry James
And it's thematic significance
Nature and function of fiction by hemgry James
And it's thematic significance
From the text:
It (fiction) must take itself seriously for the public to take it so. The old superstition about fiction being "wicked" has doubtless died out in England; but the spirit of it lingers in a certain oblique regard directed toward any story which does not more or less admit that it is only a joke. Even the most jocular novel feels in some degree the weight of the proscription that was formerly directed against literary levity; the jocularity does not always succeed in passing for gravity.