Rhythm and the “Postal Unconscious” in Suburban Sketches: W. D. Howells’s Realism and the Atlantic Monthly at the Turn of the 1870s

Abstract

이 연구는 지금까지 경시되어 온 W. D. 하월즈의 여행기 『교외 소묘』를 논하는 것을 통해 미국 사실주의의 성립에 리듬 의식이 결부되어 있음에 주목한다. 삶을 구성하는 한 측면이자 소통을 위한 재현 형식의 구성적 요소 중 하나인 이 리듬은,『교외 소묘』의 경우, 특히 출판 매체였던 『아틀랜틱 먼쓸리』와의 관계 속에서 형성되었다. 본고는 그 과정을 밝힘으로써 하월즈의 사실주의는 당대의 변화하는 소통의 미디어적 조건, 즉 페니 우편 등으로 가속된 소통의 템포를 반영하는 동시에 이를 재구성하려는 “우편적 무의식”이었음을 드러낸다.This paper aims to clarify the involvement of what can be considered “rhythm” in the establishment of American realism by focusing on a hitherto neglected work by W. D. Howells, Suburban Sketches. I argue that this rhythm is both an aspect of represented life and a structuring element of the representational form. In the case of Suburban Sketches, it was primarily formed in relation to its periodical publishing medium, the Atlantic Monthly. By showing the layers of the interactions between that magazine and the text of Suburban Sketches, this study reveals that Howells’s realism was an attempt to produce an interstice for different speeds of life and communicative modes from the dominant ones which it partly affirms, too. I argue this was carried out in challenge of the changing media condition that saw the consolidation of the Penny Post and telegraph service at the turn of the 1870s.