Confounding Images : : Photography and Portraiture in Antebellum American Fiction / / Susan S. Williams.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn eBook Package Archive 1898-1999 (pre Pub)
• VerfasserIn: Williams, Susan S.,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2016]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Edition: Reprint 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (246 p.) :; 27 illus.
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; List of Illustrations --; Preface --; Introduction: Confounding Images --; 1. The Portrait and the Social Construction of Ekphrasis --; 2. "The Inconstant Daguerreotype": The Narrative of Early Photography --; 3. The Haunted Portrait and Models of Authorship in Periodicals and Gift Books --; 4. Hawthorne, Daguerreotypy, and The House of the Seven Gables --; 5. Melville's Pierre and the Burden of Imitation --; 6. The Photography of Travel: Reading The Marble Faun --; Afterword: Photography and Portraiture in the Later Nineteenth Century --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9781512808872; 9783110442526
• DOI: 10.9783/9781512808872
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Susan S. Williams.

Susan Williams recovers the literary and cultural significance of early photography in an important rereading of American fiction in the decades preceding the Civil War. The rise of photography occurred simultaneously with the rapid expansion of magazine publication in America, and Williams analyzes the particular role that periodicals such as Godey's Lady's Book, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, and Atkinson's Casket played in defining how photography was received. At the center of the book are readings of a stunning array of fiction by forgotten and canonical writers alike, including Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, and Sarah Hale, as well as extended interpretations of Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables and The Marble Faun and Herman Melville's Pierre. In a concluding section, Williams offers a view of the fictional portrait in the later nineteenth century, when the proliferation of illustrated books once again transformed the relation between word and image in American culture.