THE REPRESENTATION OF RETICENCE IN HENRY JAMES’S WORKS
THE REPRESENTATION OF RETICENCE IN HENRY JAMES’S WORKS

Summary/Abstract: Henry James’s representation of reticence is revealed in his texts as a communicative method through which the protagonists understand each other’s unuttered words. Reticence is almost perceived in James as a distinctive mark of his own discursive mastery since the ambivalent swing between deductible and direct communication is exposed overtly. He believes that an author’s craftsmanship resides in his/her ingenuity of pushing the limitations of speech that ultimately proves the boundaries of narrative representation. The present paper proposes to analyse some of James’s novels paying particular attention to the author’s depictions of silent communication.

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