Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-x5cpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T13:38:48.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Viewing the Victorians: Recent Research on Victorian Visuality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Kevin Z. Moore
Kevin Z. Moore
Affiliation:
Brooklyn Heights, N.Y.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since carol christ's pioneering research in 1975 on the “finer optic” of Victorian poetry, the optic has become even finer in all senses of the word: refined, particular, precise, scientific, and, most importantly, thoroughly historical and material. The optical is no longer a metaphor, but a reality: a device, apparatus, or gadget whose lens-crafted appearance on the scene of vision enhances and alters “visuality,” a recently coined term for “how we moderns see seeing.” Terms which once stood solely upon metaphorical ground, as in W. D. Shaw's “The Optical Metaphor: Victorian Poetics and the Theory of Knowledge” (Victorian Studies, 1980), now refer to concrete practices, scientific optically monitored experiments, and lens and mirror evidentiary and entertainment venues that shaped internal and external life as “modern” during Queen Victoria's reign. In fact, her reign from 1837 until 1901 exactly corresponds with the era that saw the invention and gradual institutionalization of photo- and cinematographic techniques of imaging.

Type
Review Essays
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , fall 1997 , pp. 367 - 385
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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 CONSIDERED

Alberta, François and Cosandey, Roland, eds. Cinéma sans frontiers: 1896–1918. Luasanne: Editions Payot, 1995.Google Scholar
Brown, Richard and Barry, Anthony. A Victorian Film Enterprise. The History of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Wiltshire, England: Flick Books, 1997. (For copies apply to Flick Books, 29 Bradford Road, Trowbridge, Wiltshire BA149AN, England.)Google Scholar
Charney, Leo and Schwartz, Vanessa, eds. Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christ, Carol T. and Jordan, John O., eds. Victorian Literature and the Victorian Visual Imagination. Berkeley: U of California P, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christie, Ian, ed. The Last Machine: Early Cinema and the Birth of the Modern World. London: British Film Institute (BFI), 1996. (Copies available from BBC 2 Educational Development Department, 201 Wood Lane, London, W 12 7TS.)Google Scholar
Clark, T. J.The Painting of Modern Life. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.Google Scholar
Crary, Jonathan. Technologies of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Degrada, Elena, ed. International Bibliography of Early Cinema, 2 ed.Domitor Society, 1995. (For copies apply to: Secretariate c/o Lea Jacobs, University of Wisconsin, 6152 Vilas, Communication Hall, 821 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706.)Google Scholar
Frith, Francis. Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Views. London: James S. Virtue, 1860.Google Scholar
Hecht, Herman. Pre-Cinema History: An Encyclopedia and Annotated Bibliography of the Moving Image Before 1896. Ed. Hecht, Ann. London: Bowker/Saur BFI, 1993.Google Scholar
Henisch, Heinz K. and A., BridgetThe Painted Photograph (1834–1914): Origins, Techniques, Aspirations. University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Kemp, Martin. The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.Google Scholar
Lajoux, Jean-Dominique, ed. Marey/Muybridge. Conseil Régional de Bourgogne, 1996.Google Scholar
Lalvani, Suren. Photography, Vision, and the Production of Modern Bodies. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.Google Scholar
Meisel, Martin. Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Rabb, Jane, ed. Literature and Photography, Interactions 1840–1990: A Critical Anthology. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1996.Google Scholar
Shaw, W. D. “The Optical Metaphor: Victorian Poetics and the Theory of Knowledge.” Victorian Studies 23.3 (Spring 1980): 293–324.Google Scholar
Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Amherst: U Mass P, 1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, John J.Victorian London Street Life in Historic Photographs. New York: Dover, 1994.Google Scholar