The Men Who Knew Too Much

Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock

Add to my list

Edited by Susan M. Griffin and Alan Nadel

Type: Studies
Subject: Director > Alfred Hitchcock
Keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, literature
Publishing date: 2012
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 288 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-976443-3

User Ratings

(0 vote)

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Report incorrect or incomplete information

Book Presentation:
• This is the only book that compares the work of these 2 Masters of fiction and film, a provocative, rich pairing
• Brings together a range of literary and film scholars and theorists, collecting new work by important and well-known critics
• Features over 35 halftone illustrations

Henry James and Alfred Hitchcock knew too much. Self-imposed exiles fully in the know, they approached American and European society as inside-outsiders, a position that afforded them a kind of double vision. Masters of their arts, manipulators of their audiences, prescient and pathbreaking in their techniques, these demanding and meticulous artists fiercely defended authorial and directorial control. Their fictions and films are obsessed with knowledge and its powers: who knows what? What is there to know?

The Men Who Knew Too Much innovatively pairs these two greats, showing them to be at once classic and contemporary. Over a dozen major scholars and critics take up works by James and Hitchcock, in paired sets, to explore the often surprising ways that reading James helps us watch Hitchcock and what watching Hitchcock tells us about reading James. A wide-range of approaches offer fresh insights about spectatorship, narrative structure, and cinematic representation, as well as the relationship between technology and art, the powers of silence, sensory-and sensational-experiences, the impact of cognition, and the uncertainty of interpretation. The essays explore the avowal and disavowal of familial bonds, as well as questions of Victorian convention, female agency, and male anxiety. And they fruitfully engage issues related to patriarchy, colonialism, national, transnational, and global identities. The capacious collection, with its brilliant insights and intellectual surprises, is equally compelling in its range and cogency for James readers and film theorists, for Hitchcock fans and James scholars.

About the authors:
Edited by Susan M. Griffin, Justus Bier Professor of Humanities & Chair of the Department of English, University of Louisville, and Alan Nadel, William T. Bryan Chair in American Literature & Culture, University of Kentucky Susan Griffin is Justus Bier Professor of Humanities & Chair of the Department of English at the University of Louisville. Alan Nadel is William T. Bryan Chair in American Literature & Culture, University of Kentucky.

Press Reviews:
"The Men Who Knew Too Much offers a series of inspiring discussions about the process of adaptation as experienced by Hitchcock, James, and their respective protagonists. Combining close textual analysis with suggestive theoretical insights, the book shows how individuals in different socio-historical contexts negotiate important issue of gender, social identity, knowledge and authority. By reflecting on their struggles, we might learn something about ourselves and our future courses of action." - Two Masters

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

See the complete filmography of Alfred Hitchcock on the website: IMDB ...

> From the same authors: