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Seeing Things: Virtual Aesthetics in Victorian Culture
By (author) Amanda Shubert
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normal price: R 1 107.95
Price: R 996.95
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| book description |
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.
| product details |
Normally shipped |
Publisher | Cornell University Press
Published date | 15 Nov 2025
Language |
Format | Paperback / softback
Pages | 252
Dimensions | 229 x 152 x 0mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 454g
ISBN | 978-1-5017-8494-1
Readership Age |
BISAC |
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Normally shipped |
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 1 521.95
Price | R 1 369.95
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