{"product_id":"seeing-things-amanda-shubert-9781501784941","title":"Seeing Things","description":"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.","brand":"Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50941727801632,"sku":"9781501784941","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0753\/2812\/7264\/files\/9781501784941.jpg?v=1781388809","url":"https:\/\/bookcorner.com\/products\/seeing-things-amanda-shubert-9781501784941","provider":"The Book Corner","version":"1.0","type":"link"}