In the Mind's Eye

The Visual Impulse in Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-90-420-1035-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 236, 310 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 220 mm, Gewicht: 531 g

Reihe: Faux Titre

This comparative, interdisciplinary study investigates the relationship between literature and the visual arts in France and Britain from 1750-1900. Through a close examination of the prose writings of Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, read against the background of contemporary philosophy, aesthetics and theories of language, In the Mind’s Eye proposes a new interpretation of the influence and rivalries underlying the development of art criticism as a genre during this period. The visual impulse – the desire to transcend the limitations of language and make the reader see – is located within the historical traditions of ekphrasis, enargeia and the paragone, while in each chapter, the individual author’s theories of the mind, memory and imagination provide a critical framework for his stylistic experiments. In the Mind’s Eye presents an in-depth analysis of the cultural, theoretical and aesthetic implications of artistic border crossings, and by contextualizing the movement toward visual/verbal hybridity in the fiction and criticism of Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, brings new perspectives to nineteenth-century studies in art and literature.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wettlaufer, Alexandra K

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Romanische Literaturen Französische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction The Visual Impulse in Prose: Border Crossings and the Anxieties of Interdisciplinarity
Chapter 1 Towards a Visual Discourse: Theories of the Origin of Language, Enargeia, Ekphrasis and Associationism
Chapter 2 Diderot’s Visual Prose: Gesture, Hieroglyph and the Visual Imagination
Chapter 3 Baudelaire and the Salons: The Critic as Artist
Chapter 4 Les Paradis Artificiels, Le Surnaturel and the Prose Poem: The Aesthetics of Psychological Flânerie
Chapter 5 Ruskin and the Language of Images
Chapter 6 Ruskin’s Moving Images: The Politics and the Poetics of the Paragone
Conclusion Diderot, Baudelaire, Ruskin: Envisioning Visionaries
Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Alexandra Wettlaufer is an Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. The author of Pen vs. Paintbrush: Girodet, Balzac and the Myth of Pygmalion, she specializes in nineteenth-century literature and the visual arts.