Chromographia: American Literature and the Modernization of Color

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In Chromographia, Nicholas Gaskill tells the story of how color became modern and how literature, by engaging with modern color, became modernist. The only study of modern color in U.S. literature, Chromographia presents a new reading of perception in literature and a theory of experience that uses color to move beyond the usual divisions of modern thought.

Reviews

"What happened when chemists invented mauve When The Wonderful Wizard of Oz taught us childhood meant colorfulness When Stephen Crane painted courage red In Nicholas Gaskills brilliant, beautiful, and mind-expanding book, we learn the myriad ways in which being modern in America meant no less than an encounter with color itself. And that meant thinking anew about mind and body, language and world, the challenges of the avant-garde and the pleasures of popular culture. Chromographia is that rare and iridescent thing: a philosophically searching contribution to literary-cultural history."Jennifer Fleissner, Indiana University, Bloomington

"Between the 1880s and the 1930s the world changed color. Nicholas Gaskills multilayered study of the period shows how a number of factorsan emerging relational understanding of chromatic experience, the commercial production of synthetic dyes, and theories of vision derived from evolutionary biologytogether gave color a new visibility and brilliance and transformed it into a vitally important subject for literary and artistic modernism. If the cultural study of colorlets call it Chromotologywas a recognized discipline, then this would be one if its principal texts."David Batchelor, author of Chromophobia

"Chromographia is a study of color perception just as brilliant as all the saturated hues that the new chromatic technologies and synthetic dyes of the nineteenth century brought out like never before. Nicholas Gaskill explores the meaning of this modern, multicolored world from the perspective of the writers, philosophers, psychologists, and educators who, in trying to cultivate a feeling for color, believe that language has the power to augment our sensory encounter with the world and to make life more vivid. This is a dazzling book that puts us in immediate relation with the vibrancy of these decades as we learn about the dynamic forms that color takes, its importance to aesthetic experience, and its intensifying, clarifying role in modern thought."Elisa Tamarkin, University of California, Berkeley

Author Bio

Nicholas Gaskill is associate professor of American literature at the University of Oxford and tutorial fellow at Oriel College. He is coeditor of The Lure of Whitehead (Minnesota, 2014).