The Visual And Psychic Representations In Stephen Crane’s The Black Riders

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) is a productive and talented American writer, a precursor ofAmerican Literary Naturalism in the late19thcentury. He wrote five novels, two poetryanthologies, hundreds of notes, essays, short fictions and newspaper reports in his29years.Crane’s novels and short fictions have attracted amounts of scholars’ attention at home andabroad for almost a century. However, there are few research achievements in his poetry,compared with the studies of his novels and short fictions. In Crane’s poetry study, critics paymore attention to the theme analyses, including naturalistic researches and the relativeintrospections of human being, nature, society and religion. Few essays talk about his specificwriting styles and techniques in his poetry. However, the writing styles and techniques inCrane’s poetry are special for there are various visual elements in The Black Riders, which arethe representations of psychology. This paper will discuss the characteristics of visualrepresentations and the special visual effects in The Black Riders in terms of three majorvisual forms, to analyze the psychic representations with the background of Americanindustrialization and psychology at the end of the19thcentury, from the perspectives of visualculture.There are three chapters in this paper. Chapter One is to analyze the regular and irregularvisual motions and the mechanicalized perceptions in The Black Riders. The regularmechanical visual motions between up and down, far and near, and the irregular divisionalfragmented visual motions in The Black Rider, are the products and representations ofindividual’s consciousness influenced by mechanical production mode at the end of the19thcentury. Chapter Two will discuss the impressionist painting features in The Black Riders, andthe industrialized ambivalence inside. The applications of colors, lights and shadows,instantaneous images and fragmented segments in Crane’s poetry constitute the obviousimpressionist visual effects and the hidden diversified contradictory psychologies inindustrialization. Chapter Three will reveal the typographical layout in The Black Riders, andits anti-industrialized consciousnesses, including the natural pursuit, industrial accusation andsoul restoration with the analyses of the cover design, the capital letters and amounts ofblank-leaving in The Black Riders.Visual motions, impressionist paintings and typography, are the products of Americanindustrialization. In The Black Riders, these visual forms not only represent the special andspecific visual representations and visual effects, but also discuss Crane’s introspection ofmechanical production mode, and the accusation of industrialization and mechanization. In The Black Riders, Crane represents his perfect art pursuits and innovational experiments inthe context of industrialization and mechanization with three major visual forms, whichpromote the development of American poetry writings.