The Figure In The Carpet

The figure in the carpet critical commentary.

The figure in the carpet.

The figure in the carpet has evaded definitive interpretation. After reading the figure in the carpet i was left shrugging. The figure in the carpet has become a short hand or idiom for the key to understanding a writer s work. I enjoyed the ride and naïvely enough waited for a satisfying unveiling of the mysterious figure in the carpet.

The figure in the carpet might take on another twist or two but the sentence had virtually been written. According to this theory which today we may take for granted it is the text itself that speaks and the author is a mere. This is the famous figure in the carpet of the story s title and it is what vereker sets the narrator to discover. The figure in the carpet is also significant because it prefigures a prominent twentieth century literary theory that of the death of the author expounded in the late 1960s by roland barthes and michel foucault.

It is generally agreed that the figure in the carpet is one of james s more baffling stories. The figure in the carpet is a short story sometimes considered a novella by american writer henry james first published in 1896. In a way i understand the joke s on me the reader. The writer might go down to his grave.

We naturally would like to know exactly what secrets vereker has embedded in his work just as the narrator would. It is told in the first person. The question of interpretation. James just gives me the impression of being too clever for his own good.

This reminded me how i had observed at a particular moment after corvick. She was the person in the world to whom as if she had been his favoured heir his continued existence was least of a need. Although lerner doesn t mention it the title of his very short introductory chapter looking for the figure in the carpet is i assume beholden to the wonderful short story the figure in the carpet by henry james who understood a great deal about authorial intention and the pitfalls of interpretation. And yet the story in which the idiom was born henry james s 1896 tale the figure in the carpet refuses to open itself up to easy interpretations or analysis.