A familiar strangeness : American fiction and the language of photography, 1839-1945

Burrows, Stuart 1967- (Author).

Summary: "Literary critics have traditionally suggested that the invention of photography led to the rise of the realist novel, which is believed to imitate the detail and accuracy of the photographic image. Instead, says Stuart Burrows, photography's influence on American fiction had less to do with any formal similarity between the two media than with the capacity of photography to render American identity and history homogeneous and reproducible. The camera, according to Burrows, provoked a representational crisis, one broadly modernist in character. Since the photograph is not only a copy of its subject but a physical product of it, the camera can be seen as actually challenging mimetic or realistic theories of representation, which depend on a recognizable gap between original and reproduction.

Item details

ISBN: 9780820331744
ISBN: 0820331740
Physical Description: print
application/pdf
xii, 287 pages ; 24 cm
Publisher: Athens : University of Georgia Press, [2008]
Copyright: ©2008

Contents / Notes

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-275) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction. "Likeness men" : fiction and photography -- 1. Nature herself : Hawthorne's self-representation -- 2. Resembling oneself : James's photographic types -- 3. Vanishing race : Faulkner's photographic face -- 4. "Seeing myself like somebody else" : Hurston's similarities -- Conclusion. Likeness has ceased to be of any help : fiction and film.