1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910455094803321

Autore

Gilmore Paul <1970->

Titolo

Aesthetic materialism [[electronic resource] ] : electricity and American romanticism / / Paul Gilmore

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, Calif., : Stanford University Press, c2009

ISBN

0-8047-7097-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (404 p.)

Disciplina

810.9/003

Soggetti

American literature - 19th century - History and criticism

Authors, American - 19th century - Aesthetics

Electricity in literature

Telegraph in literature

Romanticism - United States

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"Parts of Chapter 3 were originally published in ATQ, Volume 16, No. 4, December 2002. Reprinted by permission of The University of Rhode Island."--T.p. verso.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-235) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : the word "aesthetic" -- Idealist aesthetics and the republican telegraph -- Aesthetic electricity -- Frederick Douglass's electric words : aesthetic politics and the limits of identification -- Mad filaments : Walt Whitman's aesthetic body telegraphic -- Conclusion : aesthetic electricity caged.

Sommario/riassunto

Aesthetic Materialism: Electricity and American Romanticism focuses on American romantic writers' attempts to theorize aesthetic experience through the language of electricity. In response to scientific and technological developments, most notably the telegraph, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century electrical imagery reflected the mysterious workings of the physical mind as well as the uncertain, sometimes shocking connections between individuals. Writers such as Whitman, Melville, and Douglass drew on images of electricity and telegraphy to describe literature both as the product of specific economic and social conditions and as a means of transcending the individual determined by such conditions. Aesthetic Materialism moves between historical and



cultural analysis and close textual reading, challenging readers to see American literature as at once formal and historical and as a product of both aesthetic and material experience.