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 is 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 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 many eminent scientists and philosophers who applied their considerable energies to the question of other worlds and other states of mind: they staged trance seances in which mediums produced spirit phenomena, including ectoplasm. Phantasmagoria shows how this often surprising story connects with some of the important scientific discoveries of a fertile age, in psychology and physics, and continues to influence contemporary experience.
| ISBN | 0199239231 | | Pages | 496 | | ISBN13 | 9780199239238
(What's this?) | | Volumes | 1 | | Publisher | Oxford University Press | | Weight (grammes) | 751 | | Imprint | Oxford University Press | | Published in | Oxford | | Format | Paperback | | Height (mm) | 234 | | Publication date | 13 Mar 2008 | | Width (mm) | 156 | | Library of Congress | BH301 | | Spine width (mm) | 37 | | DEWEY | 133.901 | | Academic level | General, Tertiary education, Professional / Scholarly | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | |
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Prologue; Introduction: The Logic of the Imaginary; I. WAX; 1. Living Likenesses, Death Masks; 2. Anatomies and Heroes: Madame Tussaud's; 3. On the Threshold: Sleeping Beauties; II. AIR; 4. The Breath of Life; 5. Winged Spirits and Sweet Airs; III. CLOUDS; 6. Clouds of Glory; 7. Fata Morgana; 8. Very Like a Whale ..; IV. LIGHT; 9. The Eye of the Imagination; 10. Fancy's Images; Insubstantial Pageants; V. SHADOW; 11. Phantasmagoria or, Darkness Visible; 12. The Origin of Painting or, the Corinthian Maid; VI. MIRROR; 13. The Danger in the Mirror: Narcissus; 14. Double Vision; 15. The Camera Steals the Soul; VII. GHOST; 16. 'Stay This Moment': Julia Margaret Cameron and Charles Dodgson; 17. Spectral Rappers, Psychic Photographers; 18. Phantoms to the Test: The Society for Psychical Research; VIII. ETHER; 19. Soul Vibrations or, The Fluidic Invisible; 20. Time Travel and Other Selves; 21. Exotic Visitors, Multiple Lives; 22. Touching the Unknown; IX. ECTOPLASM; 23. Materializing Mediums: The Quest for Ectoplasm; 24. The Rorschach Test, or Dirty Pictures; X. FILM; 25. Nice Life, an Extra's; 26. Disembodied Eyes: The Culture of Apocalypse; 27. Our Zombies, Our Selves; Conclusion
UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Review from previous edition ...often manages splendidly vivid pictorial evocations ... a bold, imaginative and provocative study, with a range few other writers would dare."--Carolyne Larrington, Times Literary Supplement
UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "The general effect is rather like that of reading through a first-class encyclopedia."--Nigel Barley, Times Higher Education Supplement
UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Frighteningly literate and well-informed"--Roz Kaveney, Time Out
UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Marina Warner is particularly well-equipped to conduct this investigation"--Steven Connor, The Independent
UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "She is exquisitely alive not just to ideas and arguments, but also to the jag and whiff and tang of things"--Steven Connor, The Independent
UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Phantasmagoria is a cabinet of familiar wonders: a jetting, generous, humane spree of thought, richly quickened by the life it finds within us and adroad, in our media a
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