Seeing Things (eBook)

Virtual Aesthetics in Victorian Culture

Amanda Shubert (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2025
Cornell University Press (Verlag)
978-1-5017-8368-5 (ISBN)

Infos

A cultural history of nineteenth-century media imaginaries, Seeing Things tells the story of how Victorians experienced the virtual images created by modern optical technologies-magic lanterns, stereoscopes, phenakistoscopes, museum displays, and illusionistic stage magic. Amanda Shubert argues that interactions with these devices gave rise to a new virtual aesthetics-an understanding of visual and perceptual encounters with things that are not really there. The popularization of Victorian optical media redefined visuality as a rational mode of spectatorship that taught audiences to distinguish illusion from reality. As an aesthetic expression of a civilizational ideal that defined the capacity to see but not believe, to be entertained without being deceived, it became a sign of western supremacy. By tracing the development of virtual aesthetics through nineteenth-century writings, from the novels of George Eliot and Charles Dickens to popular science writing and imperial travelogues, Seeing Things recovers a formative period of technological and literary innovation to explain how optical media not only anticipated cinema but became a paradigmatic media aesthetic of western modernity.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
• ISBN-10: 1-5017-8368-8 / 1501783688
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5017-8368-5 / 9781501783685