Awkwardness: The History and Art of Unease, 1750-1980

FAIN: FT-291333-23

Alexander Thur Regier
Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)

Research and writing of a monograph on the idea of awkwardness as an aesthetic and critical category in British and American literature since the 18th century.

The Fellowship is to complete a chapter for my manuscript in progress, “Awkwardness: The History and Art of Unease, 1750-1980.” The book is a study in literary-intellectual history as well as a contribution to aesthetic theory. Over the course of the book, I reveal that awkwardness is a significant aesthetic and critical category in Anglophone theoretical and imaginative texts from at least the mid-eighteenth century onward. The book tells two related stories. The first uncovers an intellectual history with theoretical import. “Awkwardness” is an operative concept in aesthetics and social theory with a rich history. My genealogy of thinkers from Adam Smith until today reveals the specific and critical power of the term as an exceptionally precise measure of artistic or social subversion. The second story shows the heuristic power of awkwardness in Anglophone literature through four case studies on William Wordsworth, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Bishop, respectively.