Picturing Reality proposes new literary historical and art historical contexts for the development of American literary realism in the late nineteenth century. While studies of American literary realism have tended to emphasize the importance of social, political, and cultural contexts in determining the forms and aims of realist representation, Picturing Reality demonstrates the importance of aesthetic contexts for a realist art of fiction. In particular, this project proposes that painting served as a model for the development of American realist fiction of the late nineteenth century that aspired to achieve the status of art because it offered a compelling model for reconciling the aspirations of prose writing to be artistic with the requirements that it be realistic. Painting served as a creative inspiration, a conceptual template, and a practical example for the development of an art of literary realism at a time when realist writing was more often seen to be anything but a fine art. The development of an art of realist fiction was to a large extent predicated on the degree to which extended narratives in prose could “picture” in order to represent dimensions of reality that had been resistant to representation by traditional narrative forms. Picturing Reality demonstrates this influence through the writings of four American writers – William Dean Howells, Henry James, Hamlin Garland, and Sarah Orne Jewett – all of whom used painting as a model for understanding themselves as realist artists. The model of painting served each of these writers in unique and idiosyncratic ways, but in all cases the sense that it was the task of the novelist or writer of prose to “picture reality” had a pervasive influence on the form, style, and content of their works. By reading broadly and deeply in their critical and fictional body of work, and by reading reviews and critiques of contemporary critics, as well as the work of other writers and artists who served as both models or obstacles for the development of an art of realism, this project seeks to situate these four writers in their literary historical and art historical contexts. In the first chapter, I show the difficulties William Dean Howells faced as he sought to make an art of realism, and suggest that American Pre-Raphaelitism furnished a model by which realistic representation could satisfy the eye of both the scientist and the artist – a model that could be adapted to the form of the realist novel. In the second chapter, I examine Henry James’s early aesthetic education among writers associated with the art journal The Crayon, as well as among painters such as William Morris Hunt and John La Farge, and look at his early career as an art reviewer in order to demonstrate the depth and breadth of painting’s influence on James’s subsequent art of fiction. In the third chapter I demonstrate the ways in which Impressionist painting informed Hamlin Garland’s theory of local color fiction and served as a model for his sketches and stories. And in the fourth chapter I demonstrate the ways in which Sarah Orne Jewett sought to create a form of local color writing in which vivid description and word-painting would take precedence over plot-driven narrative by showing Jewett’s own complex relationship to painting – particularly watercolors. For all these writers, painting served as a complex – and ultimately ambivalent – model for the development of an art of realist fiction.

The study of perfection, progress and evolution is a central theme in the history of ideas. This thesis explores this theme seen and understood as part of a discourse in the new fields of anthropology, sociology and psychology in the nineteenth century. A particular focus is on the stance taken by philosophers, scientists and writers in the discussion of theories of human physical and mental evolution, as well as on their views concerning the nature of social progress and historical change. The wisdom and feasibility of improving the human species is discussed alongside an analysis of new methods of investigating and measuring physical and mental attributes of the human organism. The instruments used to assess the development of mind, body and society are described, and are viewed as part of an increased emphasis on the use of technology as an integral part of modern life, and as a means toward the ordered gathering of information in social-scientific practice. An international perspective is taken by observing the way in which ideas about the physical and mental development of humankind was discussed in light and consequence of English and European scientific exploration in the Southern Hemisphere. Further, an evaluation is made of the manner of the spread of new thought in the social sciences from the intellectual and cultural �centre� of England and Europe to the Anglo-European community located at the �periphery� in Australia in the late nineteenth century. In particular the educative role played by the non-professional enthusiast as a pivotal conduit for the dissemination of these ideas is highlighted and linked back to a significant tradition of amateur scholarship as a central phenomenon in the study of the history of ideas.

Thesis--Münster. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 375-400).

Inaug.-diss.--Basel. / Vita. "Literatur-Abkürzungen": p. [v]-xi.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Duquesne University, 2003. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-222).

No description available.

<p> This dissertation contends that the kinds of consistency composition both affords and demands in order to hold together <i>as a</i> composition have a special location within European and American late modernism. In the decades surrounding the Second World War, artists acknowledged that art needed to let in disorder to reflect lived experience; yet, it still had to cohere in order to be recognizable as art, or a form of presentation. Paying attention to how diverse late modernist artists were thus creatively challenged, I argue that their works of art demonstrate historically located and informed compositional conservatism, or formal rigidity. Making the case for the breadth of composition's organizing force during the period, I focus on a different artist and disciplinary area in each of three chapters: Francis Bacon's oil paintings, Samuel Beckett's dramatic and theatrical work in <i>Endgame,</i> and Ralph Ellison's novelistic efforts in <i>Invisible Man</i> and his unfinished second manuscript. </p><p> Late modernist artwork exercises formal control in ways extreme enough to be called violent. But if "violence" signifies here how formal control stringently orders components (and excludes others) to bring them into line with composition's demands, this <i>formal</i> signification hardly removes such violence from having lived consequences. More, such components' failure to fall into line, or the artist's failure to accomplish such organization, can itself have unfortunate repercussions. Building on Gilles Deleuze and F&eacute;lix Guattari's art theory, which lays the groundwork for aligning apparently dissimilar compositions, I argue that in Bacon, Beckett, and Ellison, compositional force operates in ways shared by larger physical and psychological arrangements. I show how not just home or domestic spaces, but also national and political structures, including, e.g., those defining German fascism, partake in composition's formational activities. Making use of conceptual apparatuses that extend beyond Deleuzoguattarian theory to include psychoanalysis and Frankfurt School theorists, this dissertation examines how the violence (and pleasure) of form variously subtends the period's configurations.</p>

The study of perfection, progress and evolution is a central theme in the history of ideas. This thesis explores this theme seen and understood as part of a discourse in the new fields of anthropology, sociology and psychology in the nineteenth century. A particular focus is on the stance taken by philosophers, scientists and writers in the discussion of theories of human physical and mental evolution, as well as on their views concerning the nature of social progress and historical change. The wisdom and feasibility of improving the human species is discussed alongside an analysis of new methods of investigating and measuring physical and mental attributes of the human organism. The instruments used to assess the development of mind, body and society are described, and are viewed as part of an increased emphasis on the use of technology as an integral part of modern life, and as a means toward the ordered gathering of information in social-scientific practice. An international perspective is taken by observing the way in which ideas about the physical and mental development of humankind was discussed in light and consequence of English and European scientific exploration in the Southern Hemisphere. Further, an evaluation is made of the manner of the spread of new thought in the social sciences from the intellectual and cultural �centre� of England and Europe to the Anglo-European community located at the �periphery� in Australia in the late nineteenth century. In particular the educative role played by the non-professional enthusiast as a pivotal conduit for the dissemination of these ideas is highlighted and linked back to a significant tradition of amateur scholarship as a central phenomenon in the study of the history of ideas.

Thesis (Master of Education - Literacy)--Western Kentucky University, 2009. / Tables. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-138).

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 26, 2010). Thesis advisors: Dr. Trudy Lewis and Dr. Marly Swick. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.