American Impersonal : essays with Sharon Cameron / edited by Branka Arsić.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Arsić, Branka, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cameron, Sharon--Criticism and interpretation.

Cameron, Sharon.

Criticism.

Literature--Philosophy.

Literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

xvii, 356 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Bloomsbury, 2014.

Summary:

"American Impersonal brings together some of the most influential scholars now working in American literature to explore the impact of one of America's leading literary critics: Sharon Cameron. It engages directly with certain arguments that Cameron has articulated throughout her career, most notably her late work on the question of impersonality. In doing so, it provides responses to questions fundamental to literary criticism, such as: the nature of personhood; the logic of subjectivity in depersonalized communities; the question of the human within the problematic of the impersonal; how impersonality relates to the "posthuman." Additionally, some essays respond to the current "aesthetic turn" in literary scholarship and engage with the lyric, currently much debated, as well as the larger questions of poetics and the logic of genre. These crucial issues are addressed from the perspective of an American literary and philosophical tradition, and progress chronologically, starting from Melville and Emerson and moving via Dickinson, Thoreau and Hawthorne to Henry James and Wallace Stevens. This historical perspective adds the appeal of revisiting the American nineteenth-century literary and philosophical tradition, and even rewriting it"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note:

PrefaceIntroductionChapter 1: James D. Lilley

Being Singularly Impersonal: Jonathan Edwards and the Aesthetics of ConsentChapter 2: Colin Dayan

Melville's Creatures, or Seeing OtherwiseChapter 3: Paul Grimstad

On Ecstasy: Sharon Cameron's Reading of EmersonChapter 4: Johannes Voelz

The Recognition of Emerson's Impersonal: Reading Alternatives in Sharon CameronChapter 5: Vesna Kuiken

On the Matter of Thinking: Margaret Fuller's Beautiful WorkChapter 6: George Kateb

Reading NatureChapter 7: Branka Arsic

What Music Shall We Have? Thoreau on the Aesthetics and Politics of ListeningChapter 8: Kerry Larson

Hawthorne's Fictional Commitments: The Early TalesChapter 9: Theo Davis

Hawthorne's Rage: On Form and the DharmaChapter 10: Shira Wolosky

Formal, New, and Relational Aesthetics: Dickinson's MultitextsChapter 11: Michael Moon

Beyond Sense: Portraits and Objects in Henry James's Late WritingsChapter 12: Shari Goldberg

Believing in Maud-Evelyn: Henry James and the Obligation to GhostsChapter 13: Mark Noble

The Ends of Imagination: Stevens' ImpersonalNote on ContributorsIndex.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781623567590

1623567599

9781623564155

1623564158

OCLC:

846546309

Online:

Cover image