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Seeing things
Paperback
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- Book Synopsis
- 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.
- About The Author
- Amanda Shubert is Teaching Faculty in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Product Details
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- ISBN
- 9781501784941
- Format
- Paperback
- Publisher
- Cornell University Press, (15 November 2025)
- Number of Pages
- 246
- Weight
- 454 grams
- Language
- English
- Dimensions
- 229 x 152 mm
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