Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T13:24:31.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - Night Lights: The 1890s Nocturne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2023

Dustin Friedman
Affiliation:
American University, Washington DC
Kristin Mahoney
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Get access

Summary

This chapter argues that the nocturne poem, a quintessential genre of the 1890s, attunes itself to the decade’s changing relationship between the human and the natural, the aesthetic and the artificial, with some poets representing an urban, bright, smoky night sky and others presenting visions that blur city lights and starlight, or surreal representations of forests. This chapter approaches the nocturne as a transnational genre, treating British poets Mathilde Blind and Arthur Symons, alongside E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), an Indigenous Canadian poet, and Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet who launched his career writing poetry in English in San Francisco in the 1890s. Noguchi and Johnson both play into European stereotypes that writers of color offer a premodern mystique; yet both also resist that stereotype by fully engaging with the artistic and poetic trends of the 1890s in their nocturnes and by offering alternative visions of modernity. The nocturne illuminates how transnational poets understood the night sky in the wake of industrialization and the burning of fossil fuels.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×