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Book SynopsisIn this provocative study of British realism, Armstrong explains how Victorian fiction entered into a dynamic relationship with the new popular art of photography. So successful was this collaboration, Armstrong contends, that literary criticism assumes a text is gesturing toward the real whenever it invokes a photograph.
Trade ReviewIn this engaging look at Victorian fiction, Armstrong show how the unprecedented popularity of photography affected and informed the works of major writers. Choosing well from classic Victorian novels, Armstrong examines the works of authors like Dickens, Emily Bronte;, and Oscar Wilde as she traces the development of realism and discusses the powerful visual clues that began to drive plot and determine how characters relate to one another. As much social commentary as literary criticism, the book brings to life a society obsessed with the camera and burdened with what Armstrong calls a 'mass visuality.' An important work. -- Ellen Sullivan * Library Journal *
Here is intellectual leadership at its best. Entirely responsive to yet entirely independent of the conventional explanations of the origins of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British fiction, Nancy Armstrong argues that the photographic image has long been present as a structuring principle in both realist and modernist modes of writing. By foregrounding visuality, she radically reconceptualizes the relationship between realism and modernism, bringing about a paradigm shift with which scholars will have to reckon in the decades to come. As much a model of critical imagination as it is of scholarly integrity, this book accomplishes what only the rarest of books do: it teaches you how to think. -- Rey Chow, author of
Ethics after IdealismNancy Armstrong, a well-known literary critic, has contributed a major work to the new field of visual studies. The crossover is significant, for she manages to highlight the complex interplays between work and image, photography and prose, production and reception, in order to show how image-making subtly replaced writing as the grounding of fiction. The pictorial persuasions that she charts in a variety of Victorian genres subtly invert standard notions of both realism and readership. Armstrong's range is broad, her erudition and imagination are impressive, and her command of theory in putting it all together is simply stunning. -- Michael Holly, author of
Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the ImageExploring a dazzling variety of topics--landscape gardening, cartes de visite, folklore, contagious diseases legislation, the shift to paper currency, Bleak House, Dorian Gray, Heathcliff, and Alice--Nancy Armstrong pursues a single and original theme: the absolute interdependence of literary realism and the advent of photography in nineteenth-century Britain. Her elegant and compelling account makes it clear that visual studies is more than an interesting new field of study. Rather, it is central to the projects of aesthetic theory and literary history. -- Janet Wolff, author of
The Social Production of ArtTable of ContentsIntroduction: What Is Real in Realism? 1. The Prehistory of Realism 2. The World as Image 3. Foundational Photographs: The Importance of Being Esther 4. Race in the Age of Realism: Heathcliff's Obsolescence 5. Sexuality in the Age of Racism: Hungry Alice 6. Authenticity after Photography Notes Index
