The Aesthetics of Intoxication in Antebellum American Art and Culture

Thumbnail Image
Files
umi-umd-4266.pdf(2.7 MB)
No. of downloads: 7841
Publication or External Link
Date
2007-04-24
Authors
Jordan, Guy Duane
Advisor
Promey, Sally M
Citation
DRUM DOI
Abstract
My dissertation, The Aesthetics of Intoxication in Antebellum American Art and Culture, proposes an ambitious re-evaluation of aesthetics in the United States between 1830 and 1860 that locates the consumption of images in relation to discourses of excess, addiction, and dependency. I uncover the antebellum period's physiological construction of looking as a somatic process akin to eating and drinking and offer a new definition of aesthetic absorption not merely as the disembodied projection of the viewer into a pictorial space, but as the corporeal ingestion of the image into the mind of the viewing subject. I demonstrate how this heretofore unstudied and historically-grounded alignment of aesthesis and alimentation played a crucial role in the production and reception of antebellum literature and visual culture. To this end, my dissertation stands as a broad-ranging cultural history that features fundamental reinterpretations of major works of art by Charles Deas, Thomas Cole, Hiram Powers, and Frederic Church.
Notes
Rights