In this Book
- Portrait Stories
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: Fordham University Press
summary
What makes stories about portraits so gripping and unsettling? Portrait Stories argues that it is the ways they problematize the relation between subjectivity and representation. Through close readings of short stories and novellas by Poe, James, Hoffmann, Gautier, Nerval, Balzac, Kleist, Hardy, Wilde, Storm, Sand, and Gogol, the author shows how the subjectivities of sitter, painter, and viewer are produced in relation to representations shaped by particular interests and power relations, often determined by gender as well as by class. She focuses on the power that can accrue to the painter from the act of representation (often at the expense of the portrait’s subject), while also exploring how and why this act may threaten the portrait painter’s sense of self. Analyzing the viewer’s relation to the portrait, she demonstrates how portrait stories problematize the very act of seeing and with it the way subjectivity is constructed in the field of vision.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-vi
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-x
- Introduction
- pp. 1-12
- 1. Poe’s “Oval Portrait”
- pp. 13-26
- 7. Gogol, “The Portrait”
- pp. 141-157
- Reading Portrait Stories
- pp. 158-166
- Works Cited
- pp. 199-208
Additional Information
ISBN
9780823262625
Related ISBN(s)
9780823262601
MARC Record
OCLC
896852955
Pages
224
Launched on MUSE
2015-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No