Seeing Things - by Amanda Shubert

About the Book

"This book tells the story of how Victorians experienced the virtual images created by modern optical media. It argues that the period of 1830-1900 saw the emergence of virtual aesthetics: an aesthetics of visual and perceptual encounters with things that were not really there"-- Provided by publisher.

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.