A Natural History of the Eye: Shared Vision in Early American Natural History, 1784-1839
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Authors
Ross, Andrew
Issue Date
2017
Type
Dissertation
Language
Keywords
Aesthetics , Animal Studies , Early American Literature , Natural History , Visual Studies
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Abstract
“A Natural History of the Eye: Shared Vision in Early American Natural History, 1784-1839” asks what theories of vision are legible in literary and artistic texts produced within the early American natural history tradition. By tracing the representational strategies of this capacious branch of knowledge situated at the nexus of early American literary and scientific cultures, my research uncovers the relationship between what naturalists “saw” and what they “said”�"what Michel Foucault describes as the “nomination of the visible.” Applying ecocritical methods to early American literary, artistic, and scientific history, this dissertation uncovers and theorizes the many systems of knowledge which transmitted visual encounters with the natural world to a diverse, nonprofessional, yet vitally-interested early American public. The dissertation engages an archive of innovative texts that use word and image to promote particular ways of seeing, simulate via narrative techniques the first-hand visual experience of nature, and expand readers’ views of nonhuman visual experience. Studies of these authors have focused upon their importance for early American literary, scientific, and even nationalist sensibilities, but have not sufficiently considered their importance for American visuality, or for the prevalent idea that nature must be seen in order to be known and cared for. Thus, my manuscript connects environmental ethics and aesthetics to reveal the theories of observation promoted by Charles Willson Peale, William Bartram, John D. Godman, and John James Audubon. My contention is that considering the specific impact of visual perception in such a tradition contributes directly to theories about the possibilities and limits of narrative, visual, and material images to transport or position an audience in order to foster a concern for creation. Thus, in drawing upon an interdisciplinary toolbox of aesthetic theories, this dissertation is not only about a particular genre of cultural production; it also engages a broader set of questions about perception and representation in the work of naturalists of the long nineteenth century.
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In Copyright(All Rights Reserved)