Invented during a period of anxiety about the ability of human memory to cope with the demands of expanding knowledge, photography not only changed the way the Victorians saw the world, but also provided them with a new sense of connection with the past and a developing language with which to describe it. Analysing a broad range of texts by inventors, cultural critics, photographers, and novelists, Victorian Photography, Literature, and the Invention of Modern Memory: Already the Past argues that Victorian photography ultimately defined the concept of memory for generations to come –including our own. In addition to being invaluable for scholars working within the emerging field of research at the intersection of photographic and literary studies, this book will also be of interest to students of Victorian and modernist literature, visual culture and intellectual history.
Author(s): Jennifer Green-Lewis
Series: Photography, History: History, Photography
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 200
Cover
CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AFTERLIGHT
INTRODUCTION: “Starts from the Empty Sky”
PART ONE The Photograph in Time
1 Photography in the Age of Oblivion
A CULTURE OF MEMORY
THE RETRIEVABLE PAST
2 “Already the Past”: The Backward Glance of Victorian Photogarphy
THE PHOTOGRAPH IS ASSOCIATED WITH THE PAST
THE REAL IS PAST
3 HAVING BEEN: Photography and the Texture of Time
SURFACE: THE ROUGH AND THE SMOOTH
PRECISION, DURATION, SIMULTANEITY
THE FOSSIL AND THE PHOTOGRAPH
TEXTURE AND THE MATTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY
PART TWO The Photograph as Time
4 Literary Memory and Victorian Stylistics
PHOTOGRAPHY, REMEMBRANCE, AND THE NOVEL
THE LANGUAGE OF REVIEWS: REALISM AND DETAILS
THE FLASH OF INSIGHT: METAPHOR AND NARRATION
LITERARY DESCRIPTION AND THE STRUCTURE OF RECALL
THE PICTORIAL PRESENT
PAST AS PICTURE: DAVID COPPERFIELD
COMBINATION PRINTING AND NOVELISTIC MEMORY
5 Modernism's Photographic Past
PAST INACCESSIBLE: The First World War
“THE DEAD”: Photography and the Persistence of the Object
WOOLF: The “Now” of the Photographed World
“THE ACHE OF DEPARTURE”: Modernism's Victorian Childhood
6 At Home in the Nineteenth Century
THE VISIBLE NINETEENTH CENTURY
A PHOTOGRAPHIC CANON
NOSTALGIA, AUTHENTICITY, HOME FURNISHING
AT HOME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
