In Rainer Maria Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (1907-8), the poet’s attempt to render objective experience... more In Rainer Maria Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (1907-8), the poet’s attempt to render objective experience becomes a crisis of lyric capability, for each poem marks the difficulty of encountering an object without projecting the poet’s self onto the object. In this article, I reconsider this fundamental crisis in Rilke’s poetry by arguing for what I call a form of lyric narcissism, a poetic self-estrangement that results in a compensatory over-enthrallment of the self. Rather than reading narcissism as a feature of the expressive lyric self, my argument redefines narcissism in Rilke’s poetry as an aesthetic inability to relate to objects. Although this limited relation to the object provokes a crisis of representation, it also maintains a distance from the object. The “subjects” of his poems are not so much the thing described as the poet or speaker’s attempt to describe it.
Course Description: Hysteria marks the presence of a traumatic memory that arouses wild bodily sy... more Course Description: Hysteria marks the presence of a traumatic memory that arouses wild bodily symptoms, treated psychologically by translating feelings into words. Often considered a particularly female ailment, hysteria has been read by feminist scholars as a deviant, desirous language of the female body. Hysteria crosses the boundaries of pain and pleasure, madness and lucidity, and the personal and the political. In this course, we will examine psychological and theoretical accounts of hysteria as well as representations of hysteria in the arts: literature, poetry, television, film, painting, photography, and music. In hysteria, the body acts out. The focus of this class, therefore, will be thinking of hysteria as both a personal performance and a political protest.
In Rainer Maria Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (1907-8), the poet’s attempt to render objective experience... more In Rainer Maria Rilke’s Neue Gedichte (1907-8), the poet’s attempt to render objective experience becomes a crisis of lyric capability, for each poem marks the difficulty of encountering an object without projecting the poet’s self onto the object. In this article, I reconsider this fundamental crisis in Rilke’s poetry by arguing for what I call a form of lyric narcissism, a poetic self-estrangement that results in a compensatory over-enthrallment of the self. Rather than reading narcissism as a feature of the expressive lyric self, my argument redefines narcissism in Rilke’s poetry as an aesthetic inability to relate to objects. Although this limited relation to the object provokes a crisis of representation, it also maintains a distance from the object. The “subjects” of his poems are not so much the thing described as the poet or speaker’s attempt to describe it.
Course Description: Hysteria marks the presence of a traumatic memory that arouses wild bodily sy... more Course Description: Hysteria marks the presence of a traumatic memory that arouses wild bodily symptoms, treated psychologically by translating feelings into words. Often considered a particularly female ailment, hysteria has been read by feminist scholars as a deviant, desirous language of the female body. Hysteria crosses the boundaries of pain and pleasure, madness and lucidity, and the personal and the political. In this course, we will examine psychological and theoretical accounts of hysteria as well as representations of hysteria in the arts: literature, poetry, television, film, painting, photography, and music. In hysteria, the body acts out. The focus of this class, therefore, will be thinking of hysteria as both a personal performance and a political protest.
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