Aesthetic Materialism: Electricity and American Romanticism

by Paul Gilmore

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804770972
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	537 KB

About the Author

Paul Gilmore, Associate Professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, is also the author of The Genuine Article: Race, Mass Culture, and American Literary Manhood (2001).

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction: The Word "Aesthetic" 000 1.Idealist Aesthetics and the Republican Telegraph 000 2. Aesthetic Electricity 000 3. Frederick Douglass's Electric Words: Aesthetic Politics and the Limits of Identification 000 4. Mad Filaments: Walt Whitman's Aesthetic Body Telegraphic 000 Conclusion: Aesthetic Electricity Caged 000 Notes 000 Works Cited 000 Index 000

Editorial Reviews

"Paul Gilmore demonstrates that electricity was central to the discourse of American Romanticism, illuminating both the individual's place in society and the relationship of the soul to the body. After reading Aesthetic Materialism, one understands far better what Whitman meant when he 'sang the body electric.'" —David Nye, University of Southern Denmark

"Paul Gilmore's book stands forth as an indispensable critical work in dealing with the history, transatlantic dimensions, and political promises of American Romantic literature." —Russ Castronovo, University of Wisconsin, Madison

From the Publisher

"Paul Gilmore demonstrates that electricity was central to the discourse of American Romanticism, illuminating both the individual's place in society and the relationship of the soul to the body. After reading Aesthetic Materialism, one understands far better what Whitman meant when he 'sang the body electric.'"

University of Southern Denmark - David Nye