Out of Line: Aesthetics and Illness in Alan Hollinghurst and Henry James

Sigrun Meinig (University of Bielefeld, Germany)

This paper examines the interrelation between aesthetics and illness in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty and in Henry James’s fiction. The 2004 Booker prizewinner offers a panorama of the conspicuous consumption of the Thatcher years and the concomitant personality politics both in the political and the private realm. Hollinghurst’s novel condenses this into a concern with aesthetics that is encapsulated in the line of beauty of its title. This paper explores the novel’s central notion of the ogee, especially with regard to William Hogarth, in order to illuminate the manner in which the text’s own narrative line of beauty collides with the iconic illness of the 1980s, AIDS. To interrogate how the representation of illness impacts on the aesthetics of the avowedly ‘Jamesian’ The Line of Beauty, the paper discusses Giorgio Agamben’s notion of bare life and the work of Arthur W. Frank. The paper moreover puts its argument into perspective with an overview of the role of illness for the aesthetics of Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove, Daisy Miller, and selected short stories. This counterpoint will confirm the unaccommodated position of illness as one that questions dominant aesthetic procedures and will indicate the openings for their adaptation.