{"id":212,"date":"2019-10-01T17:00:47","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T17:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/?p=212"},"modified":"2018-07-03T14:14:35","modified_gmt":"2018-07-03T14:14:35","slug":"garments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/?p=212","title":{"rendered":"Garments"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Like Joyce\u2019s spectacles, (see\u00a0https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/?p=209<\/a>), authorial garments are often called upon to imagine the specifics of the author\u2019s body and the specialness of their imaginative lives. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. \u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Goethe\u2019s Travelling Coat, Goethehaus, Weimar<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This was Goethe\u2019s coat, and it owes its fame to having been the coat which he wore on his journey to Italy which he recorded in his Italienreise <\/em>(1816-17) \u2013 because of this, it is a perfect fit with his writerly mythos.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dorothy Wordsworth\u2019s Shoes, Rydal Mount<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As anyone familiar with Dorothy Wordsworth\u2019s famous journals knows, she was a great walker by day and by night. These white satin house-boots, however, were probably hers, but, unlike Goethe\u2019s coat, they are remarkably unconvincing as literary objects. They are not, one might say, the right shoes for Dorothy Wordsworth the writer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dickinson\u2019s Dress, Amherst, MA, USA<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Emily Dickinson garden exhibition<\/p><\/div>\n

This is, and is not, Emily Dickinson\u2019s dress. It is historically accurate that Dickinson dressed in white from her thirties and the actual dress survives complete with impeccable provenance. However, this is an exact replica, finished down to the slightest detail, made in 1999 for the Dickinson Homestead. The exactitude of the replica is not precisely the point, however; rather, the display of the dress is striking because it produces Dickinson as something like a ghostly body. As the curator Catherine Halley remarks in \u2018Emily Dickinson\u2019, Foundation News, October 22nd 2013: \u2018It\u2019s the first thing visitors see when they ascend the stairs, and if it\u2019s a day when sunlight from the French doors behind put the front of the dress into shadow, it makes a powerful, almost animate impression\u2026 Approaching the white dress, visitors often remark on the poet\u2019s size and stature \u2013 the dress suggests that Dickinson was about 5\u20193.\u201d This one physical fact seems to rescue Dickinson from a disembodied mythology and creates instead a new and reliable connection between the poet, her poetry, and themselves as readers.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Not) Ruskin\u2019s Walking Stick, Brantwood House<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a long tradition of collecting the author\u2019s walking-stick, perhaps because it certified him as a gentleman. Perhaps because it gives a measure of the man and his mortality This, however, is not actually John Ruskin\u2019s walking-stick. Like Dickinson\u2019s dress, it is meant to embody the writer, but it is not a replica. \u00a0It is an art installation by Samantha Clarke made as a meditation upon the Victorian sage\u2019s breakdown [add date*]. She described it in a caption as \u2018a walking stick, symbol of frailty made even frailer, worn thin and ready to snap, lies on the narrow bed where John Ruskin lay watching demons dance on the bedpost.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Like Joyce\u2019s spectacles, (see\u00a0https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/?p=209), authorial garments are often called upon to imagine the specifics of the author\u2019s body and the specialness of their imaginative lives. Sometimes this works, sometimes not. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[244,247,243,55,241,246,28,245,234,227,189,33,34,35,32,31,30,29,264,207,242,226],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amherst-museum","tag-brantwood-house","tag-catherine-halley","tag-dorothy-wordsworth","tag-emily-dickinson","tag-goethehaus","tag-history-of-reading","tag-italienreise","tag-james-joyce","tag-johann-von-goethe","tag-john-ruskin","tag-literary-landmark","tag-literary-landscape","tag-literary-museums","tag-literary-pilgrimage","tag-literary-tourism","tag-literary-tourist","tag-love-of-literature","tag-nicola-watson-the-authors-effects","tag-rydal-mount","tag-samantha-clarke","tag-weimar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212\/revisions\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}