The Consolations of Space: The Place of Romance in Hawthorne, Melville, and JamesUnlike studies that detail how American writers have responded to the physical American landscape, this book takes its point of departure from the peculiarities of romance as American writers have understood it. Romance has always been tied to place, but not to literal or regional place: even when the topography of romance is represented as a place to which one might actually go. it is always, as Coleridge remarked of Spenser's Faeryland, a mental landscape. that landscape is, by its very nature, visionary, so that its details necessarily constitute a trope of perspective. It is the space the writer creates, in which he or she stands so as to see things better, under those particular lights and shadows that make romance possible. Other writers have and have not been there before. While the spaces of romance create the writer's perspective - trope the very writing of romance - they contain complex allusions to poetic forebears. Thus this book also explores the function of literary allusion in American romance, especially in the nineteenth century. |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic Ahab allegory allusive American romance attempt become Blithedale Romance Brodhead canto chapter characters context convention create cultural Donatello earlier Emerson Emersonian Encantadas Eustace example fact Faerie Queene Feathertop fiction figures of place finally genre germ gesture Golden Bowl Gravity's Rainbow Hawthorne Hawthorne's Henry James Hilda illusion imagination Ishmael James James's Kenyon kind land landscape literal literary mance Manse Marble Faun meaning Melville's metaphor Midsummer Night's Dream Miriam's Moby Dick mode moral myth Narcissus narrative narrator nature never nonetheless novel Oberlus original paranoia particular passage past perhaps perspective Piazza Pierre poem possibility preface present prior Pynchon quest question relation remains replacement represent representation returns revision rhetorical Scarlet Letter scene sense Seven Gables simply sketch solipsism speaks Spenser Spenserian stance story strategy suggests takes tale Tanglewood tells things Thomas Pynchon tion tradition transumption trope turn vision visionary whale Wonder Book writing