Material matters
-
Simon J. James
Abstract
The representation of objects is one of the guarantors of a particular kind of literary text being characterized as realist. The mimesis of objects, possessions, and interiors, marveled at by Henry James when writing on Honoré de Balzac, and deplored by Virginia Woolf when decrying Arnold Bennett, grounds the nineteenth-century narrative in the material and the real, making an implicit claim that the world of these novels operates according to physical, social and economic laws comparable to those which govern the world in which their readers live. Objects are inanimate but they bear meaning, signifying both the place in the world of the characters that own them (the collection of the aesthete, the scanty possessions of the laborer), and, at a wider scope, material environments are shown to shape the being and living space of these characters. At the interstice of being and the object is clothing which is employed to read and write identity across the nineteenth century. The scrutiny of codes of physical appearance also generates meaning in such further developed discourses as physiognomy and caricature. Increasingly across the nineteenth century, the meanings of objects and bodies are translatable in terms of money, both the supreme and the most insubstantial object within modernity.
Abstract
The representation of objects is one of the guarantors of a particular kind of literary text being characterized as realist. The mimesis of objects, possessions, and interiors, marveled at by Henry James when writing on Honoré de Balzac, and deplored by Virginia Woolf when decrying Arnold Bennett, grounds the nineteenth-century narrative in the material and the real, making an implicit claim that the world of these novels operates according to physical, social and economic laws comparable to those which govern the world in which their readers live. Objects are inanimate but they bear meaning, signifying both the place in the world of the characters that own them (the collection of the aesthete, the scanty possessions of the laborer), and, at a wider scope, material environments are shown to shape the being and living space of these characters. At the interstice of being and the object is clothing which is employed to read and write identity across the nineteenth century. The scrutiny of codes of physical appearance also generates meaning in such further developed discourses as physiognomy and caricature. Increasingly across the nineteenth century, the meanings of objects and bodies are translatable in terms of money, both the supreme and the most insubstantial object within modernity.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- List of illustrations xi
- Editors’ preface and acknowledgments xiii
- Note on translations, cross-references and documentation xv
- Introduction 1
-
Chapter 1. Psychological pathways
-
Core essay
- “Memories inwrought with affection” 29
-
Case studies
- The interplay between emotion and memory 135
- Situations of sympathy 151
- The poetics of disgust in realist fiction 169
- Attunement 185
- Spanish and Latin American memory novels 201
- History and untold memories 217
-
Chapter 2. Referential pathways
-
Core essay
- Material matters 233
-
Case studies
- Curating realism in a world of objects 271
- Caricature and realism 287
- Realism and allegory 303
- “Distance avails not” 317
- Toward affective realism 337
- Posthumanism and realism 351
-
Chapter 3. Formal pathways
-
Core essay
- Dynamics of realist forms 367
-
Case studies
- Forms of realism in children’s literature 473
- Early theatrical realism on page and stage 489
- Poetry, Pessoa and realism 503
- The making of the historical narrative in the Swahili utenzi 519
- Photography and dissent in John Lewis’s graphic novel March 535
- The visions of John Ball 549
-
Chapter 4. Geographical pathways
-
Core essay
- Dialogic encounters 565
-
Case studies
- Varieties of theatrical realism after Ibsen 667
- Is there a notion of ‘realism’ in traditional China? 685
- Worlding of realism 703
- The real magic in Miguel Ángel Asturias’s magical realism 721
- Narrate or describe 737
- Realism in the colony 751
- Notes on contributors 763
- Index 767
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- List of illustrations xi
- Editors’ preface and acknowledgments xiii
- Note on translations, cross-references and documentation xv
- Introduction 1
-
Chapter 1. Psychological pathways
-
Core essay
- “Memories inwrought with affection” 29
-
Case studies
- The interplay between emotion and memory 135
- Situations of sympathy 151
- The poetics of disgust in realist fiction 169
- Attunement 185
- Spanish and Latin American memory novels 201
- History and untold memories 217
-
Chapter 2. Referential pathways
-
Core essay
- Material matters 233
-
Case studies
- Curating realism in a world of objects 271
- Caricature and realism 287
- Realism and allegory 303
- “Distance avails not” 317
- Toward affective realism 337
- Posthumanism and realism 351
-
Chapter 3. Formal pathways
-
Core essay
- Dynamics of realist forms 367
-
Case studies
- Forms of realism in children’s literature 473
- Early theatrical realism on page and stage 489
- Poetry, Pessoa and realism 503
- The making of the historical narrative in the Swahili utenzi 519
- Photography and dissent in John Lewis’s graphic novel March 535
- The visions of John Ball 549
-
Chapter 4. Geographical pathways
-
Core essay
- Dialogic encounters 565
-
Case studies
- Varieties of theatrical realism after Ibsen 667
- Is there a notion of ‘realism’ in traditional China? 685
- Worlding of realism 703
- The real magic in Miguel Ángel Asturias’s magical realism 721
- Narrate or describe 737
- Realism in the colony 751
- Notes on contributors 763
- Index 767
