The Literary Life of Things

Whether in the street or the microcosm of the home, the life of things conjoins human subjects and inanimate objects. Engaging a great range of American literature-from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Edith Wharton to Vladimir Nabokov and Jonathan Franzen-the book illuminates scenes of animation that disclose the aesthetic, affective, and ethical dimensions of our entanglement with the material world. »Babette Tischleder's readings of texts are no less fresh and forceful than the topics those texts bring into focus: object agency, obsolescence, patina, and (magnificently) the recalcitrance of things. The book is a timely and important contribution to American Studies and to Object Studies both.« Bill Brown, author of »A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature« Ob als Gefährten, Alter Egos oder Gegenspieler von Romanfiguren - die Welt der Dinge spielt in der amerikanischen Literatur eine wichtige Rolle. In Lektüren unterschiedlicher literarischer Prosatexte und ihrer historischen Kontexte zeigt Babette Bärbel Tischleder, wie Autorinnen und Autoren von Harriet Beecher Stowe bis Jonathan Franzen materielle Objekte sprachlich in Szene setzen. Ihre Diskussion neuerer theoretischer Ansätze zu Materialität und Dinglichkeit leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zum »material turn« in den Geisteswissenschaften.

Préface
Nordamerikastudien

Auteur

Babette Bärbel Tischleder ist Professorin für Nordamerikastudien an der Universität Göttingen.

Contenu

Contents Abbreviations 9

Acknowledgements 11

Introduction: Lively Objects-Scenes of Animation and the American Literary Imagination 15

1. Sentimental Patina: The Ideal Ecology of Objects in Harriet Beecher Stowe's House and Home Papers 45 "The Ravages of a Carpet": Novelty vs. Tradition 48 The Culture of Things: Morality vs. Anthropology 51 Sentimental Possession: An Anthropological Perspective 55 A Domestic World of Animate Things: Stowe's Culture of Comfort 58 The Moral Lesson of Furniture: Against a World Robbed of Living Things 63 Criticism and Prospects 67 Sentimental Patina 71

2. Sacred Objects, Freakish Ornaments: Domestic Environmentalism in the Gilded Age 75 A Home Hallowed by Religion: Stowe's Parlor Piety 79 Horace Bushnell, Pierre Bourdieu, and Domestic Environmentalism 82 Christian Commodities 88 Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Disenchanted Vision of Home 89 Expressive Things, Impressionable Children 91 Gothic Things and Literary Houses 94 Yellow Environments, Vicious Storytelling 97 Nerves and Decoration 101 Home Influence and Domestic Mythology in the Post-Darwinian Age 105 Mental Myopia: From the Sanctuary to the Coop 108

3. The Scent of Things: Edith Wharton, Modern Subjectivity, and the Anatomy of Taste 113 The Self in/as a Cluster of Things: Metonymy and Modern Subjectivity 120 The Flower in the Hothouse: Lily's Sensuous Nobility 126 The Scent of Things: Object Lessons and the Kinship of Taste 131 The Smell of Things 138 A Last Touch of Intimacy 148

4. Object Trouble: Thing Theory, Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin, and the American Tradition of Recalcitrant Matter 157 Thing Theory, Philosophy, Satire: From Existentialism to Resistentialism 166 "Look at the Darned Thing": Buster Keaton's One Week 174 Recalcitrance by Human Design 183 Pnin: The American Scene in the 1950s 186 Pninizing 189 A Strange World of American Things 194 Matters of Affection 197 Conclusion: Recalcitrance Revisited 204

5. The Thingness of the Text: Jonathan Franzen's Rhopography of Obsolescence 207 The Matter of Obsolescence 211 Realism and Rhopography 219 The Blue Chair and the Tangibility of Things 221 The Matter of Entropy 226 Cultural Wars and the Empire of the Ephemeral 231 Existential Obsolescence 235 Unloved Objects 240 Negative Authenticity-Abject Realness 243 The Cluttered Text 246 Lists as Literary Still Lifes 250

Epilogue: The Afterlife of Things 259

Bibliography 267

Primary Works 267

Art, Photography, Film 269

Criticism and Theory 269

Index 285