Balzac James and the Realistic Novel Author:William W. Stowe -"One can say ... that Stowe has written a virtually error-free, accomplished book, worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Mimesis, The Implied Reader, and The Act of Reading."-Melvin J. Friedman, Novel This book has a double purpose: to compare the literary projects, theories, and careers of Balzac and Henry James, and to deve... more »lop a theory of realism that can account for their unabashed mimetic intentions and for their novels' sophisticated textuality. Arguing equally against the idea of the novel as mere imitation of extraliterary reality and against the currently more widespread notion of the realistic novel as textually elaborated literary system, William W. Stowe maintains that the most successful realistic novels refer both outward to represented reality and back to themselves, commenting on their own techniques and on the process of reading that they require. The author also shows how Balzac and James often put their protagonists in situations of readership and decipherment that themselves provide the the drama of the novels. Focusing on six exemplary texts and three ways of imagining the structure of experience, he shows how the act of interpretation shapes the reader's and characters' experience in Le Pere Goriot and The American, how the process of representation influences their understanding in Illusions perdues and The Princess Casamassima, and how they are led to perceive and to participate in life as a kind of drama, in La Cousine Bette and The Wings of the Dove.« less