Title: Realism, narrative visuality and the hieroglyphic world of Newland Archer
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2008, vol. 34, iss. 1, pp. [125]-137
Extent
[125]-137
-
ISSN1211-1791
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/104245
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
In this paper I claim that despite Americanist realism's assumption of a disembodied narrative omniscience inseparable from an allegiance to national unity and homogeneity one attests within mainstream realism the emergence of new kinds of visual relations that disrupt an omniscient, detached and disinterested gaze. Through an analysis of the structural devices and iconography of Wharton's canonical realist text, The Age of Innocence, it will be shown that realism's literary production, in contradiction to its own hegemonic intent, often breaks up the "illusion of self-mirroring" revealing that behind the transcendent Cartesian observer lie embodied forms of subjectivization which, in turn, register the author's anticipation of the new social and gender relations but also her uneasiness and growing anxiety over the formation of a new national American identity.
References
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[25] Viglietta, Corinne. 'The Crisis of a Countess: Wharton's "New Frenchwoman" and a new American Woman in The Age of Innocence' http://www.nd.edu/~ujournal/past/2005–6/online/countess.doc
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[27] Weimann, Robert (1990) 'Realism, Ideology, and the Novel in America (1886–1896): Changing Perspectives in the World of Mark Twain, W. D. Howells, and Henry James'. Boundary 2 17(1), 189–210. | DOI 10.2307/303222
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[32] Wharton, Edith (1997 [1919]) French Ways and Their Meaning. Woodstock, Vermont: The Countryman Press.
[33] Wershoven, Carol (1982) The Female Intruder in the Novels of Edith Wharton. East Brunswick: Associated University Press.
[34] Zizek, Slavoj (1989) 'Looking Awry'. October 50: 35–50.
[2] Bauer, Dale M. (1994) Edith Wharton's Brave New Politics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
[3] Bentley, Nancy (1995) The Ethnography of Manners: Hawthorne, James, Wharton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
[4] Cohen, Josh (1998) Spectacular Allegories: Postmodern American Writing and the Politics of Seeing. London: Pluto.
[5] Daigrepont, Lloyd M. (2008) 'The Cult of Passion in The Age of Innocence'. American Literary Realism 40 (1), 1–15. | DOI 10.1353/alr.2008.0014
[6] Fracasso, Evelyn, E. (1991) 'The Transparent Eyes of May Welland in Wharton's The Age of Innocence'. Modern Language Studies 21, 43–48. | DOI 10.2307/3194981
[7] Hadley, Kathy Miller (1991) 'Ironic Structure and Untold Stories in The Age of Innocence'. Studies in the Novel 23, 262–72.
[8] Heidegger, Martin (1977) 'The Age of the World Picture'. In: Lovitt, William (trans.) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 115–54.
[9] Jacobs, Karen (2001) The Eye's Mind. Literary Modernism and Visual Culture. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
[10] Jameson, Fredric (1990) Signatures of the Visible. New York: Routledge.
[11] Jay, Martin (1988a) 'Scopic Regimes of Modernity'. In: Foster, Hal (ed.) Vision and Visuality. Seattle: Bay, 3–28.
[12] Jay, Martin (1988b) 'The Rise of Hermeneutics and the Crisis of Ocularcentrism'. Poetics Today 9 (2), 307–326. | DOI 10.2307/1772691
[13] Jenks, Chris (1995) 'The Centrality of the Eye in Western Culture: An Introduction'. In: Jenks, Chris (ed.) Visual Culture. London: Routledge, 1–25.
[14] Kaplan, Amy (1988) The Social Construction of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
[15] Kozloff, Sarah (2001) 'Complicity in The Age of Innocence.' Style Journal 35 (2) http://www.engl.niu.edu/style/archives/vol35n2.html
[16] Lewis, R.W.B. (1975) Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper.
[17] Newman, Beth (1990) "'The Situation of the Looker-On': Gender, Narration, and Gaze in Wuthering Heights". PMLA 105 (5), 1029–104. | DOI 10.2307/462732
[18] Orlando, Emily J. (1998) "Rereading Wharton's 'Poor Archer' a Mr. 'Might-have-been' in The Age of Innocence." American Literary Realism 1870–1910 30 (2), 56–77.
[19] Orlando, Emily J. (2006) Edith Wharton and the Visual Arts. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
[20] Pojman, Louis P. (1998) Classics of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[21] Rose, Jacqueline (1986) 'Sexuality in the Field of Vision'. In: Sexuality in the Field of Vision. London: Verso, 225–234.
[22] Singley, Carol J. (ed.) (2003a) A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton. New York: Oxford University Press.
[23] Singley, Carol J. (2003b) 'Race, culture, nation: Edith Wharton and Ernest Renan'. Twentieth Century Literature 49 (1), 32–45. | DOI 10.2307/3176007
[24] Stendhal (2002 [1830]) The Red and the Black. Gard, Roger (trans). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
[25] Viglietta, Corinne. 'The Crisis of a Countess: Wharton's "New Frenchwoman" and a new American Woman in The Age of Innocence' http://www.nd.edu/~ujournal/past/2005–6/online/countess.doc
[26] Waid, Candace (2003) 'Introduction'. In: Waid, Candance (ed.) The Age of Innocence. New York: Norton.
[27] Weimann, Robert (1990) 'Realism, Ideology, and the Novel in America (1886–1896): Changing Perspectives in the World of Mark Twain, W. D. Howells, and Henry James'. Boundary 2 17(1), 189–210. | DOI 10.2307/303222
[28] Wegener, Frederick (1999) 'Form, Selection, and Ideology in Edith Wharton's Antimodernist Aesthetic'. In: Colquitt, Clare, Susan Goodman, and Candace Waid (eds.) A Forward Glace: New Essays on Edith Wharton. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 116–38.
[29] Wegener, Frederick (2000) "'Rabid Imperialist': Edith Wharton and the Obligations of Empire in Modern American Fiction". American Literature 72(4), 783–812. | DOI 10.1215/00029831-72-4-783
[30] Wharton, Edith (1974 [1920]) The Age of Innocence. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
[31] Wharton, Edith (1996 [1927]). 'The Great American Novel'. In: Wegener, Frederick (ed.) The Uncollected Critical Writings. Princeton: Princeton, University Press, 151–58.
[32] Wharton, Edith (1997 [1919]) French Ways and Their Meaning. Woodstock, Vermont: The Countryman Press.
[33] Wershoven, Carol (1982) The Female Intruder in the Novels of Edith Wharton. East Brunswick: Associated University Press.
[34] Zizek, Slavoj (1989) 'Looking Awry'. October 50: 35–50.