UDTR — Radar mondial des droits de la Nature

Audubon: Images of the Artist in Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren

Identification

Clé publique

openalex:w93421201

Auteurs

Nancy Anne Cluck

Année déclarée

1985

Langue déclarée

en

Type source

article

Première détection

2026-11-09T19:11:46.549350+00:00

Dernière observation des métadonnées

2026-11-09T19:11:46.549350+00:00

Dernière vérification HTTP

Non effectuée

Résumé documentaire — langue originale

John James artist and natural historian, has intrigued artists, writers, environmentalists, and conservationists since eighteenth century. paradoxical figure, he has become a symbol for those who wish to preserve nature, yet, as his latest biographer reveals, was not a latter-day St. Francis of Assisi and he indulged in what appears to us today to be revolting and wantonly indiscriminate slaughter of birds; he would sometimes kill up to a hundred birds of a certain species to use them as models for a single drawing, (1) Still, Audubon, although addicted to blood sports, saw clearly outcome of orgies of senseless killing, whether of buffaloes or of passenger pigeons. (2) Audubon's origins are as clouded as his reputation; legend has it that he was a child of Dauphin, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, but records indicate that he was illegitimate child of Lieutenant Jean Audubon and a West Indian woman. As a young boy, he returned to France with his father and was raised by Jean Audubon's legitimate wife. If circumstances of his birth are ambiguous, and his symbol as a conservationist paradoxical, his work as an artist has also provoked controversy. Some critics contend that his drawings are too realistic, more nearly anatomy lessons than `aesthetic expressions.' Other critics fault him for his sentimentality; his birds, they say, exhibit human characteristics, displaying facial expressions of sorrow or happiness which defy normal constraints of decorum. Perhaps enigmatic qualities of Audubon account in part for his appeal to twentieth-century southern writers, particularly Eudora Welty and Robert Penn Warren. Providing focal point for Welty's A Still Moment (3) and Warren's Vision, (4) image of Audubon artist allows each author to explore ways of seeing, nature of artist and art work, and most importantly, relationship between artist and art work. In their techniques for developing these themes, Warren and Welty reveal similar aesthetic strategies. Both writers explore nature of vision as it arises from dream and observation; both manipulate time, first by destroying normal human time and then recreating it as aesthetic time; both use fantastic or mythical elements to fashion aesthetic space; both deal with limitations of their medium, words and speech; and both are concerned with nature of love in conception and completion of art work. While Welty short story and Warren poem differ in significant ways, their views of Audubon disclose many similarities which exemplify affinity between their own aesthetic perceptions. In his article, Audubon: Vision: Robert Penn Warren's Response to Eudora Welty's `A Still Moment,' Max A. Webb outlines many thematic parallels. He identifies four points which, he says, Warren found important in Welty's story: the notion that a man is his passion; climactic narrative of second poem; theme of inter-relatedness of love and knowledge; and Warren's transformation of Welty's ironic sense of man's limitations. (5) From these topics and techniques, according to Webb, Warren constructs a companion piece to Welty's short story. The points are well taken and Webb's essay provides a valid reading of two works. He does not, however, concern himself with image of Audubon artist or with writers' modes for developing that theme. The central element for both Welty and Warren is vision. Warren subtitles his poem A Vision and employs technique of snapshot to convey peculiar qualities of Audubon's imagination. Frank Graziano explains that the narrative proper would be avoided by structuring piece in these `snapshots'; narrativity would be essentially dismantled, and yet still-shots or flashes, like those in hand-cranked, nickel-fed picture show of past, would fall on and into one another to deliver a unified and smooth-flowing story line. …

Identifiants

OPENALEX

W93421201

Repères documentaires

Famille documentaire

Doctrine

Types déclarés par les sources

article

Entités naturelles mentionnées

Espèce

Les mentions d’entités ne constituent pas une preuve de reconnaissance juridique. La juridiction étudiée est distincte du pays d’affiliation des auteurs.

Sources

OpenAlex · Document 1

• OpenAlex · https://openalex.org/W93421201

Statut documentaire

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Cette identité n’est pas encore intégrée à la Bibliothèque juridique.