Trauma and Trope in The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James

Résumé 0

This article attempts to understand fear in James with respect to the anterior scene of consciousness. As the compulsively repeated representation of this scene in James's work shows, the artistic impulse of the subject derives from a 'traumatic'? loss of self-presence, itself the consequence of the linguistic inscription of the subject and its encounter with the other. In a tragic parody of the artistic impulse as it determines James's work as a whole, the speculative consciousness of John Marcher, in 'The Beast in the Jungle,'? obliterates the anterior scene of the encounter with the other on which the identity of the singular subject depends. Prior to the reading of the novella, a rereading of the famous Apollonian nightmare that James recounts in his autobiography is proposed, in order to delimit the operation of the artistic impulse. The reading of 'The Beast in the Jungle'? is then followed by a brief analysis of the spectral encounter in 'The Way it Came,'? in order to provide a counter-example to the kind of speculative panic that gives rise to the 'negative adventure'? of John Marcher.