Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow
In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, a host of color media technologies combined with new theories of embodied perception to alter both the types of color experiences commonly available and the general understanding of their significance. Synthetic colors brightened all manner of manufa...
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ftuninorthcardc:oai:dc.lib.unc.edu:etd/3185 2023-05-15T18:44:05+02:00 Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow Gaskill, Nicholas. Thrailkill, Jane F., 1963-; 2010-08 1.26 MB http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,3185 English eng University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,3185 Author The author has granted the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other rights. Dissertations Dissertation 2010 ftuninorthcardc 2010-10-24T15:25:53Z In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, a host of color media technologies combined with new theories of embodied perception to alter both the types of color experiences commonly available and the general understanding of their significance. Synthetic colors brightened all manner of manufactured goods, from textiles and tin can labels to candy and oil paints, and these colored materials sparked a flurry of interest in the sensory and affective impact of cultural environments. This dissertation argues that the discourses and practices of modern color in the U.S. guided literary writers in experimenting with the effects of textual environments on readers and in demonstrating, through these investigations, the role of aesthetic experience in the extra-artistic realms of commerce, political reform, and education. At issue in each of these areas is the formation of individual subjects--and the groups they might create--through interactions with an arranged material environment. Color, more so than other sensory qualities, proved especially useful in tracking and intervening in these processes because it so readily slides among sensory, linguistic, and cultural domains, all functioning within a complex act of perception. I contend that late-nineteenth-century writers such as Hamlin Garland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, and L. Frank Baum--and later authors such as Nella Larsen and Claude McKay--embraced color both as a model for literary practice (of how texts might affect readers) and as a technique for dramatizing the ways in which social identities emerge from a historical network of material and cultural practices. In the end, these two functions prove inseparable, and my account of how color launched literary realism into modernism doubles as an argument for the role of the aesthetic in our daily lives. Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis White whale University of North Carolina: UNC Digital Collections |
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University of North Carolina: UNC Digital Collections |
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English |
description |
In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, a host of color media technologies combined with new theories of embodied perception to alter both the types of color experiences commonly available and the general understanding of their significance. Synthetic colors brightened all manner of manufactured goods, from textiles and tin can labels to candy and oil paints, and these colored materials sparked a flurry of interest in the sensory and affective impact of cultural environments. This dissertation argues that the discourses and practices of modern color in the U.S. guided literary writers in experimenting with the effects of textual environments on readers and in demonstrating, through these investigations, the role of aesthetic experience in the extra-artistic realms of commerce, political reform, and education. At issue in each of these areas is the formation of individual subjects--and the groups they might create--through interactions with an arranged material environment. Color, more so than other sensory qualities, proved especially useful in tracking and intervening in these processes because it so readily slides among sensory, linguistic, and cultural domains, all functioning within a complex act of perception. I contend that late-nineteenth-century writers such as Hamlin Garland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, and L. Frank Baum--and later authors such as Nella Larsen and Claude McKay--embraced color both as a model for literary practice (of how texts might affect readers) and as a technique for dramatizing the ways in which social identities emerge from a historical network of material and cultural practices. In the end, these two functions prove inseparable, and my account of how color launched literary realism into modernism doubles as an argument for the role of the aesthetic in our daily lives. |
author2 |
Thrailkill, Jane F., 1963-; |
format |
Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
author |
Gaskill, Nicholas. |
spellingShingle |
Gaskill, Nicholas. Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow |
author_facet |
Gaskill, Nicholas. |
author_sort |
Gaskill, Nicholas. |
title |
Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow |
title_short |
Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow |
title_full |
Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow |
title_fullStr |
Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow |
title_full_unstemmed |
Vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow |
title_sort |
vibrant environments : the feel of color from the white whale to the red wheelbarrow |
publisher |
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library |
publishDate |
2010 |
url |
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,3185 |
genre |
White whale |
genre_facet |
White whale |
op_relation |
http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,3185 |
op_rights |
Author The author has granted the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other rights. |
_version_ |
1766234635967135744 |