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美國繪畫與文學
American Painting and Literature |
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Site Objectives
by Dr. Joseph Murphy
| By examining the relationships between specific works of American literature and visual art, this site seeks to introduce students to the complex ways in which verbal and visual media respond to developments in American culture, politics, and society. The objective of the site is not to establish easy parallels between verbal and visual representation. Rather, it is to develop a respect for distinct media and a recognition of, and an ability to articulate, how such media can intersect in matters of subject or aesthetics or perspective (though not necessarily in all three) and still retain clear differences. |
Site Description
This interdisciplinary site will examine relationships between American literature and visual representation (primarily painting and photography) from the early nineteenth century through the early twentieth. The site starts from the premise that American literature has existed in a rich and complicated relationship with visual art displayed in museums, expositions, books, and magazines. Our goal will be to study some (though by no means all) of the most important writers, painters, and photographers from this era, to trace lines of influence among them, and to ask how these various "texts" might illuminate each other, suggesting more about aesthetic form and social context than they could standing alone.
These questions of society and aesthetics are crucial because during the hundred years in question America transformed from a loosely affiliated rural and agricultural nation to an urban and industrial world power. Meanwhile, American art and literature were influenced by cultural movements like Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Realism, Naturalism, and Impressionism. The nature of such movements will be another focus of the course, made more accessible through an interdisciplinary approach.
Because developments in literature and visual art are wedded to changes in American society and space, the syllabus reflects geographical and historical as well as cultural categories. Unit one focuses on the American landscape before the Civil War; unit two explores representations of democracy and "the people" before the Civil War; unit three concerns the post-bellum Age of Realism, including Naturalism and Regionalism. Unit four concludes the course by tracing the roots of Modernism in American literature and art. |
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