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Whether in the street or the microcosm of the home, the life of things conjoins human subjects and inanimate objects. Engaging a great range of American literature—from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Edith Wharton to Vladimir Nabokov and Jonathan Franzen—the book illuminates scenes of animation that disclose the aesthetic, affective, and ethical dimensions of our entanglement with the material world. »Babette Tischleder's readings of texts are no less fresh and forceful than the topics those texts bring into focus: object agency, obsolescence, patina, and (magnificently) the recalcitrance of things. The book is a timely and important contribution to American Studies and to Object Studies both.« Bill Brown, author of »A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature« Ob als Gefährten, Alter Egos oder Gegenspieler von Romanfiguren – die Welt der Dinge spielt in der amerikanischen Literatur eine wichtige Rolle. In Lektüren unterschiedlicher literarischer Prosatexte und ihrer historischen Kontexte zeigt Babette Bärbel Tischleder, wie Autorinnen und Autoren von Harriet Beecher Stowe bis Jonathan Franzen materielle Objekte sprachlich in Szene setzen. Ihre Diskussion neuerer theoretischer Ansätze zu Materialität und Dinglichkeit leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zum »material turn« in den Geisteswissenschaften. Introduction: Lively Objects—Scenes of Animation and the American Literary Imagination Objects are no longer dead. In current critical thought, the material world is gaining much attention, and inanimate matter is seen to possess agency and vitality—to be alive with potential, ontological defiance, and vibrant force. While this renewed focus on questions of materiality in the humanities and the social sciences is a rather recent phenomenon, variously designated as the material turn or the new materialisms, the object world has long played a vital role in the American literary imagination. Because narrative fiction depicts human subjects in the concrete circumstances of everyday life, it is a medium that grants us particular access to a material world that can become fully animate. The worlds conjured up in and by narrative are usually configured as a tangible universe. Be it the built environment of a city, a natural habitat, or the microcosm of the home, material life is depicted as the coexistence of human subjects and inanimate objects. My book shares the "current interest in questions of material culture, objecthood, and thingness” that W.J.T. Mitchell observes in a number of academic fields—from sociology and political science to literary and cultural studies. Like other new materialist studies, The Literary Life of Things seeks to go beyond the more traditional materialisms inspired by Marx (which remain largely focused on political economy and class relations). It does so in two ways: first, by engaging with the concrete material situations and physical forces that impact and mold human lives, and, second, by spotlighting the cultural, ecological, psychological, affective, perceptive, and aesthetic dimensions of how people relate to inanimate objects and envision these relations. Contents Abbreviations 9 Acknowledgements 11 Introduction: Lively Objects—Scenes of Animation and the American Literary Imagination 15 1. Sentimental Patina: The Ideal Ecology of Objects in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s House and Home Papers 45 "The Ravages of a Carpet”: Novelty vs. Tradition 48 The Culture of Things: Morality vs. Anthropology 51 Sentimental Possession: An Anthropological Perspective 55 A Domestic World of Animate Things: Stowe’s Culture of Comfort 58 The Moral Lesson of Furniture: Against a World Robbed of Living Things 63 Criticism and Prospects 67 Sentimental Patina 71 2. Sacred Objects, Freakish Ornaments: Domestic Environmentalism in the Gilded Age 75 A Home Hallowed by Religion: Stowe’s Parlor Piety 79 Horace Bushnell, Pierre Bourdieu, and Domestic Environmentalism 82 Christian Commodities 88 Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Disenchanted Vision of Home 89 Expressive Things, Impressionable Children 91 Gothic Things and Literary Houses 94 Yellow Environments, Vicious Storytelling 97 Nerves and Decoration 101 Home Influence and Domestic Mythology in the Post-Darwinian Age 105 Mental Myopia: From the Sanctuary to the Coop 108 3. The Scent of Things: Edith Wharton, Modern Subjectivity, and the Anatomy of Taste 113 The Self in/as a Cluster of Things: Metonymy and Modern Subjectivity 120 The Flower in the Hothouse: Lily’s Sensuous Nobility 126 The Scent of Things: Object Lessons and the Kinship of Taste 131 The Smell of Things 138 A Last Touch of Intimacy 148 4.
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