Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:31:08.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ORNAMENT AND DISTRACTION: PERIPHERAL AESTHETICS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2017

Alison Georgina Chapman
Alison Georgina Chapman*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the section devoted to “Attention” in The Principles of Psychology (1890), William James describes how the “‘adaptation of the attention’” can alter our perception of an image so as to permit multiple visual formulations (417). In his example of a two-dimensional drawing of a cube, we can see the three-dimensional body only once our attention has been primed by “preperception”: the image formed by the combination of lines has “no connection with what the picture ostensibly represents” (419, 418). In a footnote to this passage, however, James uses an example from Hermann Lotze's Medicinische Psychologie (1852), to show how a related phenomenon can occur involuntarily, and in states of distraction rather than attention:

In quietly lying and contemplating a wall-paper pattern, sometimes it is the ground, sometimes the design, which is clearer and consequently comes nearer. . .all without any intention on our part. . . .Often it happens in reverie that when we stare at a picture, suddenly some of its features will be lit up with especial clearness, although neither its optical character nor its meaning discloses any motive for such an arousal of the attention. (419)

James uses the formal illogicality of the wallpaper (its lack of compositional center prevents it from dictating the trajectory for our attention according to intrinsic aesthetic laws) to demonstrate the volatility of our ideational centers, particularly in moments of reverie or inattention. Without the intervention of the will, James says, our cognitive faculties are always in undirected motion, which occurs below the strata of our mental apprehension. Momentary instances of focus or attunement are generated only by the imperceptible and purely random “irradiations of brain-tracts” (420). Attention, for James, is the artistic power of the mind; it applies “emphasis,” “intelligible perspective,” and “clear and vivid form” to the objects apprehended by the faculties of perception, it “makes experience more than it is made by it” (381). Reverie, a moment when attention has been reduced to a minimum, thus demands an alternative aesthetic analog, where composition is reduced to a minimum too.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 233 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Arata, Stephen. “On Not Paying Attention.” Victorian Studies 46. 2 (Winter 2004): 193–205. JSTOR. 14 Sept. 2016.Google Scholar
Arnheim, Rudolf. The Dynamics of Architectural Form. Berkeley: U of California P, 1977.Google Scholar
Bartlett, Jami. “Meredith & Ends.” ELH 76.3 (Fall 2009): 547–76. JSTOR. 12 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar
Beer, Gillian. Meredith: A Change of Masks. New York: Athlone, 1970.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version.” The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Ed. Jennings, Michael W., Doherty, Brigid, et al. Trans. Edmond Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, et al. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008. 19–55.Google Scholar
Brentano, Franz. Descriptive Psychology. Trans. Benito Müller. New York: Routledge, 1995.Google Scholar
Burke, Edmond. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. Phillips, Adam. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Cole, Henrietta, and Cole, Alan Summerly. Fifty Years of Public Work of Sir Henry Cole, K.C.B. Vol. 1. London, 1884. Google Books Search, 12 Aug 2015.Google Scholar
Cook, E. T., and Wedderburn, Alexander, eds. The Works of John Ruskin. New York: Longmans, Green, 1903–1912. 39 vols.Google Scholar
Dames, Nicholas. The Physiology of the Novel: Reading, Neuroscience, and the Form of Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 2012.Google Scholar
Davis, Theo. “‘Just Apply a Weight’: Thoreau and the Aesthetics of Ornament.” ELH 77.3 (Fall 2010): 561–87. JSTOR, 12 Sept. 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. The Truth in Painting. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.Google Scholar
Dimock, Wai Chee. “Weak Theory: Henry James, Colm Tóibín, and W. B. Yeats.” Critical Inquiry 39. 4 (Summer 2013): 732–53. University of Chicago Press Journals, 12 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar
Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Gombrich, E. H. The Sense of Order: A Study of the Psychology of Decorative Art. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Grabar, Oleg. The Mediation of Ornament. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Handwerk, Gary J. “Linguistic Blindness and Ironic Vision in The Egoist .” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 39. 2 (Sept. 1984): 163–85. JSTOR. 12 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar
Hay, Jonathan. Sensuous Surfaces: The Decorative Object in Early Modern China. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 2010.Google Scholar
Helsinger, Elizabeth K. Ruskin and the Art of the Beholder. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Henley, W. E. “Literature.” Athenaeum 1 Nov. 1879: no. 2714: 555–556.Google Scholar
Henley, W. E.. “Meredith.” Views and Reviews: Essays in Appreciation. Vol. 1. London: David Nutt, 1908. 50–64.Google Scholar
Henley, W. E.. “New Novels.” The Academy (1869-1902) 22 Nov. 1879: no. 394: 369–70. ProQuest. 14 Sept. 2016.Google Scholar
Hepburn, Allan. Enchanted Objects: Visual Art in Contemporary Fiction. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2010.Google Scholar
James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Vol. 1, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1981.Google Scholar
Jones, Owen. The Grammar of Ornament. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1910.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgment. Translated by Werner S. Pluhar. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987.Google Scholar
Kite, Stephen. Building Ruskin's Italy. Burlington: Ashgate, 2012.Google Scholar
Kracauer, Siegfried. “Cult of Distraction: On Berlin's Picture Palaces.” The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Trans. Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995. 323–28.Google Scholar
Landow, George P. Aesthetic and Critical Theory of John Ruskin. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2015.Google Scholar
Loos, Adolf. “Ornament and Crime.” Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays. Ed. Opel, Adolf. Trans. Michael Mitchell. Riverside: Ariadne, 1998. 167–76.Google Scholar
Mackail, J. M. The Life of William Morris. Vol. 1. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968.Google Scholar
Mao, Douglas. Fateful Beauty: Aesthetic Environments, Juvenile Development, and Literature, 1860–1960. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Mayo, Robert D. “The Egoist and the Willow Pattern.” ELH 9. 1 (March 1942): 71–78. JSTOR. 12 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar
Miller, J. Hillis. “Herself against Herself: The Clarification of Clara Middleton.” The Representation of Women in Fiction. Ed. Heilbrun, Carol G. and Higonnet, Margaret R.. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1983. 98–123.Google Scholar
Morris, William. “Art and Socialism.” On Art and Socialism. Ed. Jackson, Holbrook. London: John Lehmann, 1947. 96–114.Google Scholar
Morris, William. The Earthly Paradise: A Poem. Vol. 1. London: Longmans, Green, 1905.Google Scholar
Morris, William. “The Lesser Arts.” On Art and Socialism. Ed. Jackson, Holbrook. London: John Lehmann, 1947. 17–37.Google Scholar
Morris, William. “Making the Best of it.” Hopes and Fears for Art. Boston, 1897. 114–68.Google Scholar
Morris, William. “News from Nowhere.” News from Nowhere and Other Writings. Ed. Wilmer, Clive. New York: Penguin, 1993. 41–228.Google Scholar
Morris, William. “Useful Work versus Useless Toil.” On Art and Socialism. Ed. Jackson, Holbrook. London, John Lehman, 1947. 175–193.Google Scholar
Meredith, George. The Egoist. Toronto: Norton, 1979.Google Scholar
North, Paul. The Problem of Distraction. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2012.Google Scholar
O'Hara, Patricia. “‘The Willow Pattern that We Knew’: The Victorian Literature of Blue Willow.” Victorian Studies 36.4. (1993): 421–42. JSTOR, 12 Aug 2015.Google Scholar
Papapetros, Spyros. “Ornament as Weapon: Ballistics, Politics, and Architectural Adornment in Semper's Treatise on Ancient Projectiles.” Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local. Ed. Necipoğlu, Gülru and Payne, Alina. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2016. 46–61.Google Scholar
Partridge, Eric. Origins: a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959.Google Scholar
Pater, Walter. “The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry.” Walter Pater: Three Major Texts. Ed. Buckler, William E.. New York: New York UP, 1986. 69–220.Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997.Google Scholar
Plotz, John. Portable Property: Victorian Culture on the Move. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Rancière, Jacques. Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art. Trans.Paul Zakir. London: Verso, 2013.Google Scholar
Ribot, Théodule-Armand. The Psychology of Attention; Authorized Translation. 3rd rev. ed. Chicago, 1896. 1–132. American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Historical Monographs Collection: Series 1. 14 Sept. 2016.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “Modern Painters: Volume 1.” Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 3.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “Modern Painters: Volume 4.” Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 6.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “Proserpina.” The Works of John Ruskin. Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 25.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “The Seven Lamps of Architecture.” Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 8.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “The Stones of Venice: Volume 1.” Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 9.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “The Stones of Venice: Volume 2.” Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 10.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. The Stones of Venice: Volume 3.” Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 11.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “The Two Paths.” Ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. Vol. 16.Google Scholar
Ryan, Vanessa. Thinking without Thinking in the Victorian Novel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2012.Google Scholar
Sawyer, Paul. Ruskin's Poetic Argument: the Design of the Major Works. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Smith, Jonathan. Charles Darwin and Victorian Visual Culture. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Syme, Alison. Willow. London: Reaktion, 2014.Google Scholar
Tanner, Tony. Venice Desired. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Thomas, David Wayne. Cultivating Victorians: Liberal Culture and the Aesthetic. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2004.Google Scholar
Trilling, James. “‘Meaning’ and meanings in ornament: In search of universals.” Raritan 12.4 (Spring 1993): 52–69. EBSCO host. 12 Aug. 2015.Google Scholar
Trilling, James. Ornament: A Modern Perspective. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2003.Google Scholar
Weinroth, Michelle. Reclaiming William Morris: Englishness, Sublimity, and the Rhetoric of Dissent. Montreal: McGill UP, 1996.Google Scholar
“whim-wham, n.” OED Online. Oxford UP. Web. 12 Sept. 2016.Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. “The Critic as Artist.” The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Ellmann, Richard. New York: Random House, 1968. 341–408.Google Scholar
Wornum, Ralph Nicholson. Analysis of Ornament. The Characteristics of Styles. 3rd ed. London, 1869.Google Scholar