03483nam 22006974a 450 991110058100332120251117072557.09780804770972080477097210.1515/9780804770972(CKB)1000000000817672(EBL)912081(OCoLC)793166848(SSID)ssj0000334426(PQKBManifestationID)11255935(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000334426(PQKBWorkID)10260765(PQKB)10208516(DE-B1597)564265(DE-B1597)9780804770972(Au-PeEL)EBL912081(CaPaEBR)ebr10329909(OCoLC)1178770253(Perlego)744809(MiAaPQ)EBC912081(EXLCZ)99100000000081767220080716d2009 uy 0engur|n|---|||||txtccrAesthetic materialism electricity and American romanticism /Paul Gilmore1st ed.Stanford, Calif. Stanford University Pressc20091 online resource (404 p.)"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.9780804761239 080476123X Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-235) and index.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.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.American literature19th centuryHistory and criticismAuthors, American19th centuryAestheticsElectricity in literatureTelegraph in literatureRomanticismUnited StatesAmerican literatureHistory and criticism.Authors, AmericanAesthetics.Electricity in literature.Telegraph in literature.Romanticism810.9/003Gilmore Paul1970-1980082MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9911100581003321Aesthetic materialism4751211UNINA