Transatlantic Intertextuality in The American

The aim of the essay is to analyze The American—the first transatlantic novel in which Henry James delineates the literary and thematic principles of the “international theme”—in the light of its deeply engrained intertextuality. Engaging some of these intertextual references, the essay argues that the relationship between Henry James and his American literary background, on the one hand, and the European tradition on the other is essential to the literary and cultural significance of this text. The American can be defined as a “cross-cultural encounter novel,” because it does not only employ diverse literary genres (the novel of manners, the psychological novel, the travel novel, the romantic tragedy, and the social comedy) but also taps—by introducing in the text several second level diegetic units (novels, plays, paintings and poems)—a number of literary topoi and canonical works of art, both American and European. These amplify the chronotopical dimension of the novel and turn it into a literary cosmopolitan universe.