Synopses & Reviews
Miles of Stare explores the problem of nineteenth-century American literary vision: the strange conflation of visible reality and poetic language that emerges repeatedly in the metaphors and literary creations of American transcendentalists.
The strangeness of nineteenth-century poetic vision is exemplified most famously by Emersonand#8217;s transparent eyeball. That disembodied, omniscient seer is able to shed its body and transcend sight paradoxically in order to seeand#151;not to createand#151;poetic language and#147;manifestand#8221; on the American landscape. In Miles of Stare, Michelle Kohler explores the question of why, given American transcendentalismand#8217;s anti-empiricism, the movementand#8217;s central trope becomes an eye purged of imagination. And why, furthermore, she asks, despite its insistent empiricism, is this notorious eye also so decidedly not an eye? What are the ethics of casting a boldly equivocal metaphor as the source of a national literature amidst a national landscape fraught with slavery, genocide, poverty, and war?
Miles of Stare explores these questions first by tracing the historical emergence of the metaphor of poetic vision as the transcendentalists assimilated European precedents and wrestled with Americaand#8217;s troubling rhetoric of manifest destiny and national identity. These questions are central to the work of many nineteenth-century authors writing in the wake of transcendentalism, and Kohler offers examples from the writings of Douglass, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Howells, and Jewett that form a cascade of new visual metaphors that address the irreconcilable contradictions within the transcendentalist metaphor and pursue their own efforts to produce an American literature. Douglassand#8217;s doomed witness to slavery, Hawthorneand#8217;s reluctantly omniscient narrator, and Dickinsonand#8217;s empty and#147;miles of Stareand#8221; variously skewer the authority of Emersonand#8217;s all-seeing poetic eyeball while attributing new authority to the limitations that mark their own literary gazes.
Tracing this metaphorical conflict across genres from the 1830s through the 1880s, Miles of Stare illuminates the divergent, contentious fates of American literary vision as nineteenth-century writers wrestle with the commanding conflation of vision and language that lies at the center of American transcendentalismand#151;and at the core of American national identity.
Review
andldquo;Miles of Stareand#160;is ambitious, important, and convincing. Kohler pursues her argument across a significant portion of American literary history and thoughtfully challenges the standard reception of the texts under discussion. By analyzing the influence of American transcendentalism on literature through American Realism, Kohler pursues a vexing question in literary scholarship: what is the precise influence of the transcendentalistsandrsquo; andlsquo;strange and strained conflation of visible reality and literary language,andrsquo; and how might a better understanding of this influence revise scholarly understandings of American Realism? Kohler provides a most compelling answer.andrdquo; andmdash;Rochelle L. Johnson, author ofand#160;Passions for Nature: Nineteenth-Century Americaandrsquo;s Aesthetics of Alienation
Review
"In the most comprehensive analysis to date, Michelle Kohler opens up the surprising heterogeneity of nineteenth-century American literary vision: how--as problematic figure, pervasive theme, and shared cultural activityand#151;writers variously contested and revised national vision to make a place for other eyes, other identities, other modes of knowledge. This is Americanist literary scholarship at its best: generous, historically and culturally astute, forcefully and lucidly written, and rich with subtle readings of central works."
and#151;William Rossi, coeditor of Emerson and Thoreau: Figures of Friendship
Review
"Impressive close readings, rich historical context, and graceful prose make this a strong addition to the many scholarly considerations of the 19th-century problem of seeing."
and#151;CHOICE
Review
andldquo;With a rare combination of thoroughgoing erudition and playful close reading, Michelle Kohler redefines Ralph Waldo Emersonandrsquo;s consequence for the American sceneandhellip;.A milestone in American studies,
Miles of Stare establishes a focused but flexible outlook on the difficult fascination of American literary vision.andrdquo;
andmdash;The Emily Dickinson Journal
andquot;Impressive close readings, rich historical context, and graceful prose make this a strong addition to the many scholarly considerations of the 19th-century problem of seeing.andquot;
andmdash;CHOICE
and#160;
Synopsis
Miles of Stare explores the problem of nineteenth-century American literary vision: the strange conflation of visible reality and poetic language that emerges repeatedly in the metaphors and literary creations of American transcendentalists.
About the Author
Michelle Kohler is assistant professor of English at Tulane University.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Stare that Signalizes
1. Emerson, Transcendentalism, and the Problem of Literary Vision
2. Doomed to Be a Witness: The Authority of Ineluctable Vision in Douglassand#8217;s Slave Narratives
3. Dim Optics: Privacy, Access, and the Reluctant Seer in Hawthorneand#8217;s House of the Seven Gables
4. Scarce Opon My Eyes: Fleeting Visions and the Epistemology of Metaphor in Dickinsonand#8217;s Poetry
5. To Arrange a Perspective: Howells, Jewett, and the Provoked Eye of Realism
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index