Listening to/and James: A Look Back at the 8th International Conference of the Henry James Society

In recent years, scholarship in the field of Henry James’ life and work saw attention paid to a vast range of diverse topics, with numerous contributions from all over the world. In particular, 2019 saw the consolidation of a specific focus on “the aural dimension in Henry James’s work,” to quote the title of the 8th Henry James Society International Conference. Held in Trieste, the 8th edition of the window par excellence on Jamesian international scholarship was the most visible occasion in which James’ sensibility toward music, sound, and the acoustic found new spaces of critical assessment. It was the opportunity to take stock of a trend that in recent years has added the dimension of sound to the well-established scholarly interest in James’ complex relationship with the visual and his acute sensibility for the visual arts—sculpture, architecture, and especially, painting. James’s relationship with music and sound is proving to be an excellent observation point from which to revitalize the study of James’s fortunes and legacies both during his lifetime and after, informing new original research on James’s adaptations on the stage as well as in audio-visual media, and on James’s echoes and refrains in subsequent literature. This essay aims to give an overview of these issues in Jamesian scholarship, organized around thematic clusters, and to take stock of seminal published works as well as more recent publications.