| What Was Literary Impressionism? Subjects: Impressionism in literature -- Visual perception in literature; English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; English literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; America; "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see . That--and no more, and it is every-thing." So wrote Joseph Conrad in the best-known account of literary impressionism, the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century movement featuring narratives that paint pictures in readers' minds. If literary impressionism is anything, it is the project to turn prose into vision. Michael Fried is J.R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities and director of the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University. |