Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century
Buch, Englisch, 496 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm
ISBN: 978-0-19-929994-2
Verlag: Oxford University Press
Phantasmagoria explores ideas of spirit and soul since the Enlightenment; it traces metaphors that have traditionally conveyed the presence of immaterial forces, and reveals how such pagan and Christian imagery about ethereal beings are embedded in a logic of the imagination, clothing spirits in the languages of air, clouds, light and shadow, glass, and ether itself. Moving from Wax to Film, the book also discusses key questions of imagination and cognition, and probes the
perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it uncovers a host of spirit forms -- angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies -- that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing idea about the self. Phantasmagoria also
tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women -- scientists and philosophers -- who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their
considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance séances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in
psychology and physics.
Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in colour and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times.
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perceived distinctions between fantasy and deception; it uncovers a host of spirit forms -- angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies -- that are still actively present in contemporary culture. It reveals how their transformations over time illuminate changing idea about the self. Phantasmagoria also
tells the accompanying story about the means used to communicate such ideas, and relates how the new technologies of the Victorian era were applied to figuring the invisible and the impalpable, and how magic lanterns (the phantasmagoria shows themselves), radio, photography and then moving pictures spread ideas about spirit forces. As the story unfolds, the book features the many eminent men and women -- scientists and philosophers -- who in the Society of Psychical Research applied their
considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance séances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. The book shows how this often embarrassing story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in
psychology and physics.
Over a sequence of twenty-eight chapters, with over thirty illustrations in colour and black and white, Phantasmagoria thus tells an unexpected and often uncomfortable story about shifts in thought about consciousness and the individual person, from the first public waxworks portraits at the end of the eighteenth century to stories of hauntings, possession, and loss of self as in the case of the zombie, a popular figure of soulessness, in modern times.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft
- Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
- Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Alternative Glaubensformen
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft
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