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"The Jolly Corner"

PAMELA JACOBS SHELDEN (ESSAY DATE SPRING 1974)

SOURCE: Shelden, Pamela Jacobs. "Jamesian Gothicism: The Haunted Castle of the Mind." Studies in the Literary Imagination 7, no. 1 (spring 1974): 121-34.

In the following essay, Shelden considers James's use of Gothic conventions, centering on his use of the doppelgänger, or double, and other Gothic devices in "The Jolly Corner."

I

Many critics consider [Charles] Brockden Brown, [Edgar Allan] Poe, and [Nathaniel] Hawthorne the American heirs of the Gothic tradition in literature, born when Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto in 1764. Few, however, treat the supernatural tales of Henry James within this context. Typical Gothic conventions such as haunted castles, flickering candles, time-yellowed manuscripts, and dimly-lighted midnight scenes may, at first, appear rather remote from James's...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Henry James (Story Date February 1868)
4. General Commentary
   1. Raymond Thorberg (Essay Date Summer 1967)
5. Title Commentary
   1. "The Jolly Corner"
6. Further Reading

1. Henry James