Chapter 1 - The Poet as “Exact Reporter of the Essential Law”: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Poetics in the Context of Early Photography

Summary

The chapter shows that Emerson and Whitman refined their poetics by probing the truth claims and reality effects of photography. It expands our understanding of American romantic literature by connecting the romantic concern with intuition, firsthand experience, and organic expression to the emergence of photography. Claims to authenticity and immediacy were central to the reform efforts of the transcendentalists because they enabled them to resist social conventions, to counter the commercialization of literary culture, and to renew literature’s democratic ethos. The chapter identifies photographic discourse as an important testing ground for this orientation. Emerson repeatedly reflected on photography to think through the relations between knowledge and mediation and to define the cultural role of literature. At first, he held that the camera’s capacity to record optical reality without distortion realized his ideal of intuitive insight and original expression. His attitude towards photography grew more ambivalent, however, as his commitment to a poetics of process deepened. Seeking to represent a world in flux, Emerson grew wary of photography’s stabilized records of reality.