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Beautiful Deceptions: American Art and European Aesthetics, 1750-1828
Project funded by own resources |
Project title |
Beautiful Deceptions: American Art and European Aesthetics, 1750-1828 |
Principal Investigator(s) |
Schweighauser, Philipp
|
Organisation / Research unit |
Departement Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften / Amerikanistik (Schweighauser) |
Project start |
01.04.2007 |
Probable end |
31.12.2012 |
Status |
Completed |
Abstract |
This second book manuscript explores the status of deception in mid eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century European aesthetics and contemporaneous American literature, painting, and sculpture. The art of the early republic (1788-1828) in particular abounds in representations of deception: the villains of Gothic novels deceive their victims with all kinds of visual and acoustic tricks; the ordinary citizens of novels modeled on Cervantes' famous tale are hoodwinked by quacks and illiterate but shrewd picaros; and innocent sentimental heroines fall for their seducers' eloquently voiced half-truths and lies.
Yet deception happens not only within these works of art but also through them: Charles Brockden Brown's, Hugh Henry Brackenridge's, Susanna Rowson's, Hannah Webster Foster's, Tabitha Gilman Tenney's, and Royall Tyler's fictions invent worlds that do not exist; Charles Willson Peale's and Raphaelle Peale's trompe l'oeil paintings trick their spectators into mistaking them for the real thing; and Patience Wright's wax sculptures have deceived (and disturbed) none less than Abigail Adams.
Taking my cue from the original meaning of 'aesthetics' as "the science of sensuous cognition" (Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in 1735) and the writings of early European aestheticians (Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schiller, Charles Batteux, David Hume, Edmund Burke), I argue that the currently dominant political readings of deception in Early American Studies need to be supplemented by an aesthetic perspective that acknowledges that deception in and through early American art constitutes as much a comment on eighteenth-century debates concerning the nature and function of art and sensuous perception as it responds to shifts in social and political organization. |
Keywords |
deception, aesthetics, politics,eighteenth-century American literature and culture, early nineteenth-century American literature and culture, early American novel, sculpture, painting, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten |
Financed by |
University funds
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Published results () |
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ID |
Autor(en) |
Titel |
ISSN / ISBN |
Erschienen in |
Art der Publikation |
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80010 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
Literature in Transition : European aesthetics and the early American novel |
978-3-8233-6372-9 |
American aesthetics |
Publication: Book Item (Buchkap., Lexikonartikel, jur. Kommentierung, Beiträge in Sammelbänden etc.) |
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111300 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
Book and Wax: Two Early American Media of Deception |
1436-7211 |
Philologie im Netz. Beihefte |
Publication: JournalArticle (Originalarbeit in einer wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift) |
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958832 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
Terror has exterminated all the sentiments of nature: American terror, the French Revolution, and Charles Brockden Brown's Arthur Mervyn |
978-3-643-80082-4 |
Terrorism and narrative practice |
Publication: Book Item (Buchkap., Lexikonartikel, jur. Kommentierung, Beiträge in Sammelbänden etc.) |
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1291385 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
Early American Studies Now: A Polemic from Literary Studies |
0340-2827 |
Amerikastudien |
Publication: JournalArticle (Originalarbeit in einer wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift) |
|
1428641 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
[Review of] Liberty of the Imagination: Aesthetic Theory, Literary Form, and Politics in the Early United States (2012) by Edward Cahill |
0340-2827 |
Amerikastudien |
JournalItem (Kommentare, Editorials, Rezensionen, Urteilsanmerk., etc. in einer wissensch. Zeitschr. |
|
2280743 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
Early American Studies Now: A Response to the Respondents |
0340-2827 |
Amerikastudien |
Publication: JournalArticle (Originalarbeit in einer wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift) |
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2280749 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
[Review of] Truth's Ragged Edge: The Rise of the American Novel (2013) by Philip F. Gura |
0340-2827 |
Amerikastudien |
JournalItem (Kommentare, Editorials, Rezensionen, Urteilsanmerk., etc. in einer wissensch. Zeitschr. |
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2280750 |
Schweighauser, Philipp |
[Review of] Empowering Words: Outsiders and Authorship in Early America (2013) by Karen A. Weyler |
0340-2827 |
Amerikastudien |
JournalItem (Kommentare, Editorials, Rezensionen, Urteilsanmerk., etc. in einer wissensch. Zeitschr. |
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