American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance

by John T. Irwin

Overview

A sophisticated examination of the American Symbolists, back in print for the first time in more than a decade.

The discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the subsequent decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics captured the imaginations of nineteenth-century American writers and provided a focal point for their speculations on the relationships between sign, symbol, language, and meaning. Through fresh readings of classic works by Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, John T. Irwin’s American Hieroglyphics examines the symbolic mode associated with the pictographs.

Irwin demonstrates how American Symbolist literature of the period was motivated by what he calls “hieroglyphic doubling,” the use of pictographic expression as a medium of both expression and interpretation. Along the way, he touches upon a wide range of topics that fascinated people of the day, including the journey to the source of the Nile and ideas about the origin of language.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421421155
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John T. Irwin is the Decker Professor in the Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University, where he formerly served as chair of the Writing Seminars. His previous books include The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story, recipient of the Modern Language Association’s Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies and Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Prize.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

Part 1 Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman

1 Champollion and the Historical Background; Emerson's Hieroglyphical Embiems 3

2 Thoreau: The Single, Basic Form-Patenting a Leaf 14

3 Whitman: Hieroglyphic Bibles and Phallic Songs 20

Part 2 Poe

4 The Hieroglyphics and the Quest for Origins: The Myth of Hieroglyphic Doubling 43

5 Ends and Origins; The Voyage to the Polar Abyss and the Journey to the Source of the Nile; The Survival of the Manuscript 64

6 Certainty and Credibility-Self-Evidence and Self-Reference; Nietzsche and Tragedy-Whitman and Opera; The Open Road 94

7 Writing Self / Written Self; The Dark Double; The Overwhelming of the Vessel 114

8 Cannibalism and Sacrifice; Metaphors of the Body-Transfiguration, Transubstantiation, Resurrection, and Ascension 129

9 Narcissus and the Illusion of Depth 148

10 Self-Recognition; Deciphering a Mnemic Inscription; Historical Amnesia and Personal Anamnesis 163

11 Repetition; Symbolic Death and Rebirth; The Infinite and the Indefinite; The Mechanism of Foreshadowing 183

12 The Unfinished Narrative; The Cavern Inscription on Tsalal; Survival in an Image 195

13 The White Shadow; Imaging the Indefinite; Reading the Spirit from the Letter; The Finality of Revenge; The Alogical Status of the Self 205

14 The Return to Oneness; Breaking the Crypt; The Limits of Interpretation; The Ultimate Certainty 223

Part 3 Hawthorne and Melville

15 Hawthorne: The Ambiguity of the Hieroglyphics; The Unstable Self and Its Roles; Mirror Image and Phonetic Veil; The Feminine Role of the Artist; Veil and Phallus; The Book as Partial Object 239

16 Melville: The Indeterminate Ground; A Conjunction of Fountain and Vortex; The Myth of Isis and Osiris; Master Oppositions; The Doubleness of the Self and the Illusion of Consistent Character; Dionysus and Apollo; Mask and Phallus; The Chain of Partial Objects 285

Epilogue 351

Notes 355

Index 363

What People are Saying About This

J. Hillis Miller

This is major scholarship, both as it contributes to American history of ideas and as it offers a brilliant new interpretation of major nineteenth-century American writers.

Nineteenth-Century Fiction

American Hieroglyphics is a major reinterpretation of the nineteenth-century American literary imagination.

From the Publisher

This is major scholarship, both as it contributes to American history of ideas and as it offers a brilliant new interpretation of major nineteenth-century American writers.
—J. Hillis Miller

American Hieroglyphics is a major reinterpretation of the nineteenth-century American literary imagination.
—Nineteenth-Century Fiction