How Long to Read Miles of Stare

How Long Does it Take to Read Miles of Stare?

It takes the average reader 4 hours and 5 minutes to read Miles of Stare by Michelle Kohler

Assuming a reading speed of 250 words per minute. Learn more

Description

Miles of Stare explores the problem of nineteenth-century American literary vision: the strange conflation of visible reality and poetic language that emerges repeatedly in the metaphors and literary creations of American transcendentalists. The strangeness of nineteenth-century poetic vision is exemplified most famously by Emerson’s transparent eyeball. That disembodied, omniscient seer is able to shed its body and transcend sight paradoxically in order to see—not to create—poetic language “manifest” on the American landscape. In Miles of Stare, Michelle Kohler explores the question of why, given American transcendentalism’s anti-empiricism, the movement’s central trope becomes an eye purged of imagination. And why, furthermore, she asks, despite its insistent empiricism, is this notorious eye also so decidedly not an eye? What are the ethics of casting a boldly equivocal metaphor as the source of a national literature amidst a national landscape fraught with slavery, genocide, poverty, and war? Miles of Stare explores these questions first by tracing the historical emergence of the metaphor of poetic vision as the transcendentalists assimilated European precedents and wrestled with America’s troubling rhetoric of manifest destiny and national identity. These questions are central to the work of many nineteenth-century authors writing in the wake of transcendentalism, and Kohler offers examples from the writings of Douglass, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Howells, and Jewett that form a cascade of new visual metaphors that address the irreconcilable contradictions within the transcendentalist metaphor and pursue their own efforts to produce an American literature. Douglass’s doomed witness to slavery, Hawthorne’s reluctantly omniscient narrator, and Dickinson’s empty “miles of Stare” variously skewer the authority of Emerson’s all-seeing poetic eyeball while attributing new authority to the limitations that mark their own literary gazes. Tracing this metaphorical conflict across genres from the 1830s through the 1880s, Miles of Stare illuminates the divergent, contentious fates of American literary vision as nineteenth-century writers wrestle with the commanding conflation of vision and language that lies at the center of American transcendentalism—and at the core of American national identity.

How long is Miles of Stare?

Miles of Stare by Michelle Kohler is 238 pages long, and a total of 61,404 words.

This makes it 80% the length of the average book. It also has 75% more words than the average book.

How Long Does it Take to Read Miles of Stare Aloud?

The average oral reading speed is 183 words per minute. This means it takes 5 hours and 35 minutes to read Miles of Stare aloud.

What Reading Level is Miles of Stare?

Miles of Stare is suitable for students ages 12 and up.

Note that there may be other factors that effect this rating besides length that are not factored in on this page. This may include things like complex language or sensitive topics not suitable for students of certain ages.

When deciding what to show young students always use your best judgement and consult a professional.

Where Can I Buy Miles of Stare?

Miles of Stare by Michelle Kohler is sold by several retailers and bookshops. However, Read Time works with Amazon to provide an easier way to purchase books.

To buy Miles of Stare by Michelle Kohler on Amazon click the button below.