Romanticism and Visuality : Fragments, History, Spectacle

ISBN-13: 9780415961189 / Angielski / Twarda / 2007 / 246 str.

Sophie Thomas

Opis

This study addresses the intersection of literature and visual culture in examining the place of vision (the visible, the invisible, the imaginary) in Romanticism. It explores literary engagements with the expanding visual field, arguing that the popular culture of Regency Britain reflected not just emergent and highly capitalized forms of mass entertainment, but also a lively interest in the aesthetic and conceptual dimensions of looking. Moreover, what is commonly thought to be the Romantic resistance to the visible reveals a generative fascination with the visual and its conceptual as well as sensory, even spectacular, possibilities. This study examines a broad selection of instances - from Daguerre's Diorama, to the staging of Coleridge's play Remorse, to the figure of the Medusa in Shelley's poetry and at the Phantasmagoria.

Recenzje

"Exploring the inter-relationship between literature and visual culture in the Romantic period, Thomas (humanities, U. of Sussex) looks at how seeing itself was viewed, both by people involved in creating visual spectacle and those who responded by writing in literature about the status of the visual. Her topics include the fragment in ruins, Romantic idealism and the interference of sight, and vision and revulsion in Shelley. Some of the chapters have been published as independent essays." -- Book News Inc., August 2008

O autorze

Sophie Thomas is Lecturer in English at the University of Sussex and taught previously at the University of Toronto. She is the author of articles on English Romanticism and visual culture and is working on a new book about fragments.