ABSTRACT
In A Little Tour in France James is seeking to produce a string of verbalized picturesque impressions of rural French scenes for the US traveller. These scenes illustrate historical features of “Frenchness” that usually escape travellers who identify France with Paris only. For James, mental pictures capture the visual impression of the sense of the French past at specific locations which are sometimes natural but mainly architectural. James is especially fond of representing non-restored ruins at the twilight hour that evoke a sense of the past and also allow for the work of imaginative processing. In addition, he repeatedly refers to the fictional quality of the imaginative processing of a sense of the past. James favors three historical eras and their architectural traces in particular: the Gallo-Romanesque, the French Middle Ages, and the French Renaissance. He expresses preference not so much for grand designs like an aqueduct or a papal palace, but rather for smaller constructs, such as a domestic abode or a fountain. He dislikes every trace of the French Revolution, which he usually captures in the form of what it destroyed. The reason for this attitude is James’s interest in French cultural continuity, which seems most evident in architecture. The picturesque impressions of buildings and views in A Little Tour in France constitute personal mental images in verbalized form that serve to create diverse senses of the French past for the traveller.
