Landscape/Mindscape of American Sublime: Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens

초록

Since the nineteenth century, as culture has developed and evolved, American society has ideologically needed something to support different intellectual climates such as Puritanism, Individualism, Pragmatism, Transcendentalism, and Liberalism. This essay employs Humboldt’s concept of ‘landscape’ when interpreting American landscape paintings in the context of such climates. Originally, Humboldt tried to incorporate nature with diversity into one and adopt art and science to capture the entire universe in his thoughts. He explains that unlike Burke and Kant’s views on ‘beauty’ and ‘sublime,’ the difference between ‘beauty’ and ‘sublime’ is not the difference in intensity on human emotions, but the kind of landscape that causes differences in emotions. The essay explores the idea that the integration is best suited to explain the formation process of American identity, proving that it is in line with Emerson’s transcendentalism, and confirming that the artistic concept of ‘landscape’ can be extended to philosophical concepts through the works of American poets’ works such as Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” and Wallace Stevenson’s “Anecdote of the Jar,” and “The Snow Man.”

키워드