![]() ![]() That is, the prevailing sense of ambiguity and uncertainty compels the reader to consider two very different narrative interpretations: one is a traditional story of discontented and malicious supernatural specters while the other hints at an evil far more mortal, carnal, and dark. I assert that it is precisely these qualities that mark the schism between James’ ghost story and the generic tale. These tendencies finds their origin in the narrative structures and forms present within the novel: constructs that largely serve to augment the tale’s chief quality of ambiguity and insoluble mystery. ![]() However, in 1898 Henry James published The Turn of the Screw, a gothic ghost tale that is as defined by its propensity to engage in the traditional qualities of its genre as it is by its refusal to follow the traditional canon. James’ own collection of ghost stories in the 20th century, these five attributes seemingly recur perpetually. James’ insight delineated something of the archetype for the traditional ghost story from Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto to M.R. These narrative qualities identified were a ‘pretense of truth’, “a pleasing terror”, ‘little to no graphic bloodshed or sex’, no “explanation of the machinery”, and a setting in “the writer’s (and reader’s) own day”. James identified five essential attributes of the traditional ‘ghost story’. The Depth of Ambiguity: How Henry James’ Turn of The Screw Employs Our Imagination In 1929, M.R. ![]() ![]() How Henry James’ Turn of The Screw Employs Our Imagination ![]()
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