Research Catalog

Victorian photography, painting, and poetry : the enigma of visibility in Ruskin, Morris, and the Pre-Raphaelites

Title: Victorian photography, painting, and poetry : the enigma of visibility in Ruskin, Morris, and the Pre-Raphaelites / Lindsay Smith.
Author: Smith, Lindsay.
Publication: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Not available - Please for assistance.	Book/Text	Use in library	NX543 .S64 1995	Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 245 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

This book explores the intersections between Victorian literature, painting, and photography. Taking as a starting-point mid-nineteenth-century developments in the understanding of visual perception, Lindsay Smith examines the representation of a pervasive desire for a literal understanding of the process of seeing and perceiving. This is played out in the aesthetic theory of John Ruskin, the early poetry of William Morris, paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, and in the photographic technique of combination printing. She demonstrates how the novel presence of the camera in nineteenth-century culture not only transforms acts of looking, but also affects major social, aesthetic and philosophical categories. By exploring the intricacies of photographic discourse she shows how Ruskin and Morris produce a critique of the earlier Cartesian perspectival model of vision.

Series Statement

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 6

Uniform Title

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 6.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-239).

Contents

1. Ruskin, Morris, and the (un)assertive eyes -- 2. 'Gaps on the mind's shelves': Ruskin's theory of the grotesque -- 3. 'The seed of the flower': photography and Pre-Raphaelitism -- 4. 'Where he cannot see, he will not venture far': the critical reception of The Defence of Guenevere -- 5. The optical agency of 'Rapunzel' -- 6. The politics of sight: The Defence of Guenevere and the optical determinants of medieval topography -- 7. Coda: through yellow lenses.

ISBN

0521472881
9780521472883
9780521054683
0521054680

LCCN

94035999

OCLC

ocm31413097
31413097
SCSB-2066787

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library