Scanning the Hypnoglyph

Sleep in Modernist and Postmodern Representation
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-90-04-31618-8
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 46, 344 Seiten, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 640 g

Reihe: Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Nathaniel Wallace’s Scanning the Hypnoglyph chronicles a contemporary genre that exploits sleep’s evocative dimensions. While dreams, sleeping nudes, and other facets of the dormant state were popular with artists of the early twentieth century (and long before), sleep experiences have given rise to an even wider range of postmodern artwork. Scanning the Hypnoglyph first assesses the modernist framework wherein the sleeping subject typically enjoys firm psychic grounding. As postmodernism begins, subjective space is fragmented, the representation of sleep reflecting the trend. Among other topics, this book demonstrates how portrayals of dormant individuals can reveal imprints of the self. Gender issues are taken up as well. “Mainstream,” heterosexual representations are considered along with depictions of gay, lesbian, and androgynous sleepers.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wallace, Nathaniel

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Prosa, Erzählung, Roman, Prosaautoren
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

I. Introduction: From Hypnos to the Hypnoglyph
Formatting the Hypnoglyph
Sleep and Narrative Resistance
Sleep and Cognitive Study
The Dream, Textual Servant
Fighting Sleep:

Persons & Baxter: The Case of the Christian Directory
Descartes’s cogito & Pascal
Baudelairean Backgrounds
Sleep amid Mid-Nineteenth Century Migrations of Religious Discourse

II. A Life in the Day of a Hypnoglyph: Vertical Slumber and Other Typicalities
Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sleeping Standing Up”
Robert Lowell’s “Man and Wife”
Vincent Desiderio, The Sleeping Family, The Interpretation of Color

III. The Size of Sleep, Sizing the Self
Thomas Mann’s “Sleep, Sweet Sleep” (“Süßer Schlaf”)
Richard Wilbur’s “Walking to Sleep”
Anselm Kiefer’s The Rose Gives Honey to the Bees (Dat Rosa Mel Apibus)
Fran Gardner’s No Need for Wings and Orienting the Self
David Yaghjian’s Sleep

IV. Latter Day Ariadnes: From Hypnoglyph to Somnoscript
Marguerite Duras’s The Malady of Death (La maladie de la mort)
Anselm Kiefer’s Brunnhilde Sleeps (Brünnhilde Schläft)
Yasunari Kawabata’s “House of the Sleeping Beauties”

V. Alternate Endymions / Other Ariadnes
Gustave Courbet’s Sleep (The Two Friends)
The Plurisexual Marcel Proust
The Queer Schlaraffenland of Paul Cadmus
Signorelli’s Afterlife from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan
Andy Warhol’s Sleep
Marguerite Duras’s Blue Eyes Black Hair (Les yeux bleus cheveux noirs)
Mark Tansey’s Utopic
Vincent Desiderio’s Couple

VI Conclusion: The Hypnoglyph and the Missing Closure of the Postmodern

Works Cited
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Nathaniel Wallace, a comparatist by training (Ph.D., Rutgers), teaches English at South Carolina State University. He has published on varied topics, sleep included. He has held NEH and Camargo fellowships and lectured in Norway (University of Bergen) on a Fulbright.