"Voyages of the Self": Parallels in American Painting and Literature

elective courses
elective monographs

The main objective of this lecture series is to develop an intersemiotic comparative perspective connecting painting and the the literary work of art in respect to American art and literature of the 19th and 20th century.

Classroom

The subject matter of this series of talks is presentation and analysis of relations between American painting from the late 18th till the mid-20th century and the selected works, poetics, and ideas of American thinkers and writers, from Jonathan Edwards through Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Crane, etc.,and three twentieth-century poets: Charles Reznikoff, Frank O'Hara, and Charles Olson. The main inspiration has been Barbara Novak's book "Voyages of the Self. Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature," but both the list of paintings and texts, and the repertory of reading methods have been considerably expanded. The result is a comprehensive panorama of connections - those available to today's spectators and readers as well as those documented by direct personal relations between painters and twentieth-century poets. Each talk will be illustrated with ample visual material.

Syllabus:

1. Introduction

2. John Singleton Copley and Jonathan Edwards

3. Washington Allston as writer and painter

4. John Quidor and Washington Irving

5. Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant

6. Fitz Hugh Lane and Ralph Waldo Emerson

7. Fitz Hugh Lane, Native American art and Henry David Thoreau

8. Frederic Edwin Church and Walt Whitman

9. Winslow Homer and William James

10. Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane

11. Albert Pinkham Ryder and Emily Dickinson

12. Edward Hopper and Charles Reznikoff

13. Larry Rivers and Frank O'Hara

14. Jackson Pollock and Charles Olson

15. Final test

David Blelejac, "Millenial Desire and the Apocalyptic Vision of Washington Allston." Washington, D.C.-London: Smithsonian Institution P, 1988.

Sarah Burns, "Painting on the Dark Side. Art and the Gothic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America." Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: U of California P, 2004.

Michael Fried, "Realism, Writing, Disfiguration. On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane." Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1987.

David Lehman, "The Last Avant-Garde. The Making of the New York School of Poets." NY: Anchor,1998.

David C. Miller, ed. "American Iconology. New Approaches to Nineteeth-Century Art and Literature." New Haven-London: Yale UP, 1993.

Barbara Novak, "American Painting of the Nineteenth Century. Idealism, Realism, and the American Experience." Oxford-NY: Oxford UP, 1980.

Barbara Novak, "Nature and Cuture. American Landscape and Painting 1825-1875." Oxford-NY: Oxford UP, 1980.

Barbara Novak,"Voyages of the Self. Pairs, Parallels, and Patterns in American Art and Literature." Oxford-NY: Oxford UP, 2007.

Marjorie Perloff, "Frank O'Hara: Poet Among Painters." Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1977.

Bryan Jay Wolf, "Romantic Re-Vision. Culture and Consciousness in Nineteenth-Century American Painting and Literature." Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1982.

Final test