"The Figure in the Carpet" as an Allegory of Reading

Abstract

This essay deals with one of James's tales of 'Literary Life'. A complex and multidimensional tale which here is read as a metaliterary story demanding a metareading. The creative act here is not merely a form of thematic representation as the tale allegorizes its own functioning and has itself en abime. Anticipating the skeptical epistemology of contemporary literature, the tale recounts the uselessness of looking for the "essence", for a single unambiguous meaning.