American Literature's Aesthetic Dimensions / / ed. by Cindy Weinstein, Christopher Looby.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Altieri, Charles,; Beam, Dorri,; Bentley, Nancy,; Cahill, Edward,; Castiglia, Christopher,; Cavitch, Max,; Ellison, Julie,; Esteve, Mary,; Freedman, Jonathan,; Hale, Dorothy J.,; Looby, Christopher,; Lott, Eric,; Loughran, Trish,; New, Elisa,; Ngai, Sianne,; Steiner, Wendy,; Weinstein, Cindy,; Wilson, Ivy G.,
• HerausgeberIn: Looby, Christopher,; Weinstein, Cindy,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (440 p.) :; ‹B›B&W Illus.: ‹/B›.

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

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part 1. Aesthetics and the Politics of Freedom -- 1. Liberty of the Imagination in Revolutionary America -- 2. The Writing on the Wall -- 3. Stephen Crane's Refrain -- 4. Lyric Citizenship in Post 9/11 Performance -- Part 2. Aesthetics and the Representation of Sexuality -- 5. Aesthetics Beyond the Actual: The Marble Faun and Romantic Sociality -- 6. Henry James, Constance Fenimore Woolson, and the Figure in the Carpet -- 7. Sexuality's Aesthetic Dimension -- 8. From Hawthorne to Hairspray -- Part 3. Aesthetics and the Reading of Form -- 9. When Is Now? -- 10. Reading in the Present Tense -- 11. What Maggie Knew -- 12. Upon a Peak in Beinecke -- Part 4. Aesthetics and the Question of Theory -- 13. Warped Conjunctions -- 14. Aesthetics and the New Ethics -- 15. Postwar Pastoral -- 16. Perfect Is Dead -- 17. Network Aesthetics -- Afterword -- Contributors -- Index