Melville, beauty, and American literary studies : an aesthetics in all things /
This book examines Herman Melville's engagements with beauty as both a concept and a shared experience. Throughout his prose and poetry, Melville reflects on the origins and effects of beauty, which he associates with natural forms and states of interdependence. Melville develops this perspecti...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Oxford :
Oxford University Press,
2023.
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| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | Oxford Studies in American Literary History Ser.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | This book examines Herman Melville's engagements with beauty as both a concept and a shared experience. Throughout his prose and poetry, Melville reflects on the origins and effects of beauty, which he associates with natural forms and states of interdependence. Melville develops this perspective on beauty across his career, and it anchors the philosophy and aesthetics of books such as Moby-Dick, Timoleon, and Weeds and Wildings. In this book, Cody Marrs reconstructs how and why Melville cultivated this perspective on beauty, which emerged out of Melville's lifelong interest in painting, sculpture, science, and metaphysics. The book begins by reconsidering Melville's longstanding reception as a writer of the sublime and retracing the evolution of American literary studies as a field. The chapters examine three of the major modes through which Melville apprehends beauty, moving from ancient aesthetics to floral forms to psychological experiences of beauty. The book concludes with a reflection on the methods of literary studies and the viability of Pragmatism for thinking about aesthetics. Melville, Beauty, and American Literary Studies thus provides a revisionary account of Melville's career and a new interpretive framework for literary studies. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780191967955 0191967955 9780192699718 0192699717 |