The Commerce of Vision : Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America /
Brownlee, Peter John
The Commerce of Vision : Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America / Peter John Brownlee. - 1 online resource (264 p.) : 8 color, 93 b/w illus. - Early American Studies .
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. An Ocular Age: Vision in a World of Surfaces -- Part I. The Problem of Vision -- Chapter One. Ophthalmology, Popular Physiology, and the Market Revolution in Vision -- Chapter Two. Vision, Eyewear, and the Art of Refraction -- Part II. The Chaos of Print -- Chapter Three. Broadsides, Display Types, and the Physiology of the Moving Eye -- Chapter Four. Signboards, Vision, and Commerce in the Antebellum City -- Part III. Painting, Print, Perception -- Chapter Five. The Optics of Newspaper Vision -- Chapter Six. Paper Money, Spectral Illusions, and the Limits of Vision -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments
restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1837 that "Our Age is Ocular," he offered a succinct assessment of antebellum America's cultural, commercial, and physiological preoccupation with sight. In the early nineteenth century, the American city's visual culture was manifest in pamphlets, newspapers, painting exhibitions, and spectacular entertainments; businesses promoted their wares to consumers on the move with broadsides, posters, and signboards; and advances in ophthalmological sciences linked the mechanics of vision to the physiological functions of the human body. Within this crowded visual field, sight circulated as a metaphor, as a physiological process, and as a commercial commodity. Out of the intersection of these various discourses and practices emerged an entirely new understanding of vision.The Commerce of Vision integrates cultural history, art history, and material culture studies to explore how vision was understood and experienced in the first half of the nineteenth century. Peter John Brownlee examines a wide selection of objects and practices that demonstrate the contemporary preoccupation with ocular culture and accurate vision: from the birth of ophthalmic surgery to the business of opticians, from the typography used by urban sign painters and job printers to the explosion of daguerreotypes and other visual forms, and from the novels of Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville to the genre paintings of Richard Caton Woodville and Francis Edmonds. In response to this expanding visual culture, antebellum Americans cultivated new perceptual practices, habits, and aptitudes. At the same time, however, new visual experiences became quickly integrated with the machinery of commodity production and highlighted the physical shortcomings of sight, as well as nascent ethical shortcomings of a surface-based culture. Through its theoretically acute and extensively researched analysis, The Commerce of Vision synthesizes the broad culturing of vision in antebellum America.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
In English.
9780812295306
10.9783/9780812295306 doi
Vision.
Visual communication--History--United States--19th century.
Visual perception--Economic aspects--History--United States--19th century.
HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.
American History. American Studies. Cultural Studies.
P93.5 / .B739 2019
302.2/22
The Commerce of Vision : Optical Culture and Perception in Antebellum America / Peter John Brownlee. - 1 online resource (264 p.) : 8 color, 93 b/w illus. - Early American Studies .
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. An Ocular Age: Vision in a World of Surfaces -- Part I. The Problem of Vision -- Chapter One. Ophthalmology, Popular Physiology, and the Market Revolution in Vision -- Chapter Two. Vision, Eyewear, and the Art of Refraction -- Part II. The Chaos of Print -- Chapter Three. Broadsides, Display Types, and the Physiology of the Moving Eye -- Chapter Four. Signboards, Vision, and Commerce in the Antebellum City -- Part III. Painting, Print, Perception -- Chapter Five. The Optics of Newspaper Vision -- Chapter Six. Paper Money, Spectral Illusions, and the Limits of Vision -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments
restricted access http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
When Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1837 that "Our Age is Ocular," he offered a succinct assessment of antebellum America's cultural, commercial, and physiological preoccupation with sight. In the early nineteenth century, the American city's visual culture was manifest in pamphlets, newspapers, painting exhibitions, and spectacular entertainments; businesses promoted their wares to consumers on the move with broadsides, posters, and signboards; and advances in ophthalmological sciences linked the mechanics of vision to the physiological functions of the human body. Within this crowded visual field, sight circulated as a metaphor, as a physiological process, and as a commercial commodity. Out of the intersection of these various discourses and practices emerged an entirely new understanding of vision.The Commerce of Vision integrates cultural history, art history, and material culture studies to explore how vision was understood and experienced in the first half of the nineteenth century. Peter John Brownlee examines a wide selection of objects and practices that demonstrate the contemporary preoccupation with ocular culture and accurate vision: from the birth of ophthalmic surgery to the business of opticians, from the typography used by urban sign painters and job printers to the explosion of daguerreotypes and other visual forms, and from the novels of Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville to the genre paintings of Richard Caton Woodville and Francis Edmonds. In response to this expanding visual culture, antebellum Americans cultivated new perceptual practices, habits, and aptitudes. At the same time, however, new visual experiences became quickly integrated with the machinery of commodity production and highlighted the physical shortcomings of sight, as well as nascent ethical shortcomings of a surface-based culture. Through its theoretically acute and extensively researched analysis, The Commerce of Vision synthesizes the broad culturing of vision in antebellum America.
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
In English.
9780812295306
10.9783/9780812295306 doi
Vision.
Visual communication--History--United States--19th century.
Visual perception--Economic aspects--History--United States--19th century.
HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.
American History. American Studies. Cultural Studies.
P93.5 / .B739 2019
302.2/22