{"product_id":"scanning-the-hypnoglyph-sleep-in-modernist-and-postmodern-representation-9789004316188","title":"Scanning the Hypnoglyph: Sleep in Modernist and Postmodern Representation","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNathaniel 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Wallace offers a fascinating exploration of how humans have sought to represent that most elusive cousin of thanatos, sleep itself.  While setting his parameters within the modernist and post-modernist eras, W. engages with a wide-ranging swath of discourses (from Platonic philosophy to 17th century French painting to contemporary cognitive science), all of which have addressed the challenges of speaking the unsayable nature of dormancy.  The author identifies sleep’s critical function as resistant to narrative processes, as humans alternatingly cede to and resist psychic maturation.  In the process, if somewhat paradoxically, his investigation reveals much about how we tell stories of the self (the diarist’s impulse), or seek to escape the grasp of those stories. Taken discretely, Wallace’s analyses of verbal and visual representations of sleep initiate the reader into various interpretive strategies that allow us to better contemplate sleeping subjects (though our full comprehension of those subjects may remain just out of reach).  Particularly impressive is Wallace’s understanding of Baudelaire’s sonnets as heralding a modernist approach to sleep, one that reflects upon the precarious realities of urban sprawl.  Cumulatively, Wallace’s readings chart conflicted but entangled attitudes toward sleep that, on the one hand, uphold its salubrious restorative potential and, on the other, condemn its allure as an escape from industry and cognition.  A well developed and erudite approach to sleep that is anything but soporific, Wallace’s book should prove a critical conversant in the ever evolving debates that surround discourses of sleep as well as its antithesis, the vigilant Argos that is twenty-first century surveillance.\"  - Hunter H. Gardner, University of South Carolina    \"Scanning the Hypnoglyph is a trove of fascinating and surprising references. Wallace's deciphering of sleep gives elegant and extensive voice to the unsayable, thereby enriching our imagination and understanding of how subjectivity can become shaped and reshaped through sleep. This is a must read for comparatists, not simply for its content but also for its methodologies.\" - Wenying Xu, Jacksonville University, Florida, in The Comparatist, vol. 44, October 2020    \"Wallace casts his net wide, providing detailed analysis of writers from North America, France, and Japan and no less detailed scrutiny of the work of visual artists from North America, Germany, and France. The book is handsomely illustrated and Wallace reads visual texts as patiently and astutely as he reads literary ones. [...] It is difficult to imagine a reader interested in the history of sleep who would not learn something from every chapter of this book.\" - Michael Greaney, Lancaster University, in MLR, vol. 116, iss. 3, 2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eList of Illustrations Preface\t\t\t Acknowledgments  I.\tIntroduction: From Hypnos to the Hypnoglyph \tFormatting the Hypnoglyph \tSleep and Narrative Resistance \tSleep and Cognitive Study \tThe Dream, Textual Servant \tFighting Sleep: \t\tPersons \u0026amp; Baxter: The Case of the Christian Directory \t\tDescartes’s cogito \u0026amp; Pascal \tBaudelairean Backgrounds \tSleep amid Mid-Nineteenth Century Migrations of Religious Discourse  II.\tA Life in the Day of a Hypnoglyph: Vertical Slumber and Other Typicalities \tElizabeth Bishop’s “Sleeping Standing Up” \tRobert Lowell’s “Man and Wife” \tVincent Desiderio, The Sleeping Family, The Interpretation of Color  III.\tThe Size of Sleep, Sizing the Self \tThomas Mann’s “Sleep, Sweet Sleep” (“Süßer Schlaf”) \tRichard Wilbur’s “Walking to Sleep” \tAnselm Kiefer’s The Rose Gives Honey to the Bees (Dat Rosa Mel Apibus) \tFran Gardner’s No Need for Wings and Orienting the Self \tDavid Yaghjian’s Sleep  IV.\tLatter Day Ariadnes: From Hypnoglyph to Somnoscript \tMarguerite Duras’s The Malady of Death (La maladie de la mort) \tAnselm Kiefer’s Brunnhilde Sleeps (Brünnhilde Schläft)  \tYasunari Kawabata’s “House of the Sleeping Beauties”  V.\tAlternate Endymions \/ Other Ariadnes \tGustave Courbet’s Sleep (The Two Friends) \tThe Plurisexual Marcel Proust \tThe Queer Schlaraffenland of Paul Cadmus \tSignorelli’s Afterlife from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan \tAndy Warhol’s Sleep \tMarguerite Duras’s Blue Eyes Black Hair (Les yeux bleus cheveux noirs) \tMark Tansey’s Utopic \tVincent Desiderio’s Couple  VI\tConclusion: The Hypnoglyph and the Missing Closure of the Postmodern  Works Cited Index","brand":"Brill","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53210685505879,"sku":"9789004316188","price":142.4,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/scanning-the-hypnoglyph-sleep-in-modernist-and-postmodern-representation-9789004316188","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}