American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions

American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions

Edited by: Cindy Weinstein and Christopher Looby

Columbia University Press | 2012

https://doi.org/10.7312/wein15616

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Contents

About this book

Rethinking the category of aesthetics in light of recent developments in literary theory and social criticism, the contributors to this volume showcase the interpretive possibilities available to those who bring politics, culture, ideology, and conceptions of identity into their critiques. Essays combine close readings of individual works and authors with more theoretical discussions of aesthetic theory and its relation to American literature. In their introduction, Weinstein and Looby argue that aesthetics never left American literary critique. Instead, the essay casts the current "return to aesthetics" as the natural consequence of shortcomings in deconstruction and new historicism, which led to a reconfiguration of aesthetics.

Subsequent essays demonstrate the value and versatility of aesthetic considerations in literature, from eighteenth-century poetry to twentieth-century popular music. Organized into four groups—politics, form, gender, and theory—contributors revisit the canonical works of Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Stephen Crane, introduce the overlooked texts of Constance Fenimore Woolson and Earl Lind, and unpack the complexities of the music of The Carpenters. Deeply rooted in an American context, these essays explore literature's aesthetic dimensions in connection to American liberty and the formation of political selfhood.

Contributors include Edward Cahill, Ivy G. Wilson, June Ellison, Dorri Beam, Christopher Castiglia, Christopher Looby, Wendy Steiner, Cindy Weinstein, Trish Loughran, Jonathan Freedman, Elisa New, Dorothy Hale, Mary Esteve, Eric Lott, Sianne Ngai

Author information

Cindy Weinstein is professor of English at the California Institute of Technology and the author of The Literature of Labor and the Labors of Literature: Allegory in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction and Family, Kinship, and Sympathy in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. She is also the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe and coeditor, with Peter Stoneley, of A Concise Companion to American Fiction, 1900–1950.

Christopher Looby is professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Voicing America: Language, Literary Form, and the Origins of the United States and editor of The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson. With Christopher Castiglia, he is the coeditor of a special issue of ESQ on "New Approaches to Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century American Literature" and wrote the introduction to Robert Montgomery Bird's Sheppard Lee, Written by Himself.

Reviews

Wilson Kaiser, Edward Waters College:
Ambitious... An invaluable read for students of American literature.

Jacob Brogan:
This is a book that deserves to be read by all who are, like its contributors, 'disenchanted with disenchantment' and looking to formulate whatever might come next...

James Davis, Brooklyn College, City University of New York:
Containing work by some of the finest contemporary U.S. literary scholars, and by marshalling their insights toward a common goal—recuperating the aesthetic—this volume provokes an energetic critical conversation.

Samuel Otter, author of Philadelphia Stories: America's Literature of Race and Freedom:
This collection, superbly edited and introduced, is a major contribution to current debates about literature, politics, and aesthetics and to our understanding of the relationship between the critical past and present.

Michael T. Gilmore, Brandeis University:
This indispensable book recuperates questions of beauty, form, sensuousness, and taste after they have been largely discarded by the politically engaged criticism of the last two to three decades. Understandably wary about a renewal of the aesthetic as the absolute horizon of interpretation, Weinstein and Looby—and their contributors—make a compelling case for reintegrating formalism and historicism. I can think of no other collection with similar richness and revisionary scope; its appearance marks a watershed in the study of American literature.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	ix
Introduction Cindy Weinstein and Christopher Looby Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
Part 1. Aesthetics and the Politics of Freedom
1. Liberty of the Imagination in Revolutionary America Edward Cahill Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	39
2. The Writing on the Wall Ivy G. Wilson Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	56
3. Stephen Crane’s Refrain Max Cavitch Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	73
4. Lyric Citizenship in Post 9/11 Performance Julie Ellison Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	91
Part 2. Aesthetics and the Representation of Sexuality
5. Aesthetics Beyond the Actual: The Marble Faun and Romantic Sociality Christopher Castiglia Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	117
6. Henry James, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and the Figure in the Carpet Dorri Beam Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	137
7. Sexuality’s Aesthetic Dimension Christopher Looby Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	156
8. From Hawthorne to Hairspray Wendy Steiner Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	178
Part 3. Aesthetics and the Reading of Form
9. When Is Now? Cindy Weinstein Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	197
10. Reading in the Present Tense Trish Loughran Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	219
11. What Maggie Knew Jonathan Freedman Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	242
12. Upon a Peak in Beinecke Elisa New Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	263
Part 4. Aesthetics and the Question of Theory
13. Warped Conjunctions Nancy Bentley Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	291
14. Aesthetics and the New Ethics Dorothy J. Hale Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	313
15. Postwar Pastoral Mary Esteve Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	328
16. Perfect Is Dead Eric Lott Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	349
17. Network Aesthetics Sianne Ngai Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	367
Afterword Charles Altieri Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	393
Contributors Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	405
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	411

American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions

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