The Aspern Papers Literary Elements

Novella

The story takes place in Venice in the late 19th century.

First-person, unnamed narrator.

Foreboding, haunting, suspenseful.

The protagonist of the story is narrator who wants to get the Aspern papers, and the antagonist is Miss Juliana Bordereau, who wants to keep them secret.

The central conflict is between the narrator and Miss Juliana Bordereau, although there is also a secondary internal conflict experienced by Juliana's niece Miss Tita as she debates whether or not to help the narrator.

The story contains a double climax: the first occurs when Juliana walks in on the narrator sneaking into her desk, and the second when Miss Tita reveals that she has burned the letters.

The story uses images of decay in order to foreshadow the narrator's failure to obtain the papers and Juliana's death.

Rather than understate, the narrator often uses hyperbole and extremely strong language to emphasize his obsession with the papers and his love for Aspern.

The story alludes to a real-life event: the letters of Lord Byron and his former lover, Claire Clarmont, which a then-admirer of Byron's friend and poet Percy Shelley wanted to access in order to learn more about Percy Shelley.

Imagery is used when portraying the routine of the house, the house's decay, and Venice itself, which the narrator visits on several gondola rides through the canals. The imagery in the house focuses primarily on the house's age and destitution.

Although the narrator sees Miss Tita as a helpless, pathetic woman, she emerges to destroy the papers and ultimately exerts her power over the narrator's fate by burning the letters, which he did not think she was capable of because of her desperate need for friendship.

The novella contains a meta-fictional parallelism: as the narrator writes about Aspern within the novella, he also composes the novella itself and consciously writes his own narrative that the reader interacts with as the text of The Aspern Papers.

James often uses personification when describing the environment, which also relates to the narrator's first-person perspective. The narrator confesses to worshipping the Romantics, and a key feature of Romantic poetry is the personification of the landscape. Thus, his obsession can be seen through the style he chooses to employ when describing his surroundings.