Henry James の"The Last of the Valerii"に於ける"picturesque"について

Abstract

This paper's aim is to study what an idea, the picturesque in Henry James's "The Last of the Valerii" means. The picturesque is referred to beauty in a picture. It relates to the surface of an object, but has no relation to the deep structure of the object. It is not connected with any intellectual working of an observer. And it is embodied as a character, a count in the work. "The Last of the Valerii" is told by a painter whose American god-daughter gets married with an Italian count. The painter calls the count "a picturesque hunband." The count is good and strong and handsome. He has a beautiful form, but has no spirit. He has an old historical background as an Italian, but he can not connect the historical with the present. He can catch the past only by his outward sense without intellectuality. When Juno, a Greek statue, is exvacated from the soil of his villa, he is taken away from the present to the past by Juno, and he forgets his wife whom he loved so much. That accident is due to his lack of spirit, which means that he is a "picturesque" man.