Optiques

by Goulet, Andrea

• ISBN13: 9780812239317
• ISBN10: 0812239318
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-05-10
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

Andrea Goulet takes the study of the novel into the realm of the visual by situating it in the context of nineteenth-century scientific and philosophical discourse about the nature of sight. She argues that French realism, detective fiction, science fiction, and literature of the fantastic from 1830 to 1910 reflected competition between two modern visual modes: a not-yet-outdated idealism and an empiricism that located truth in the body. More specifically, the book argues that key narrative forms of the nineteenth century were shaped by a set of scientific debates: between idealism and materialism in Honoreacute; Balzac'sComeacute;die humaine, between deduction and induction in early French detective fiction, and between objective vision and subjective vision in the "optogram" fictions of Jules Verne and others. Goulet aims to revise critical views on the modern novel in a number of ways. For instance, although many literary studies focus on the impact of cinema, photography, and painting,Optiquesasserts the materialist bases of realism by establishing a genealogy of popular fictional genres as fundamentally optical, that is, as articulated according to bodily notions of sight. With its chronological and interdisciplinary scope,Optiquesstands to contribute an important chapter to the study of literary modernity in its scientific context.

Author Biography

Andrea Goulet teaches French at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Table of Contents

Introduction. The Epistemology of Optics: Seeing Subjects, Modern Minds	1	(18)
Part I: Realism and the Visionary Eye: Balzac's Optics of Narration
1. Second Sight and the Authorial chambre noire: Les Chouans, Louis Lambert	19	(14)
2. "Tomber dans le phénomène": Afterimages in La Maison Nucingen and Le Bal de Sceaux	33	(15)
3. Alternative Optics: Séraphîta, La Recherche de l'absolu, and La Peau de chagrin	48	(11)
4. "Effets de lumière," or A "Second" Second Sight: La Fille aux yeux d'or	59	(26)
Part II: Tenebrous Affairs: Romans policiers and the Detecting Eye
5. Cuvier, Helmholtz, and the Visual Logics of Deduction: Poe, Doyle, Gaboriau	85	(25)
6. Learning to See: Monsieur Lecoq and Empiricist Theories of Vision	110	(27)
7. Sealed Chambers and Open Eyes: Leroux's Mystère de la chambre jaune	137	(18)
Part III: Villiers, Verne, and Claretie: Toward a Fin-de-Siècle "Optogrammatology"
8. Death and the Retina: Claire Lenoir, L'Accusateur, and Les Frères Kip	155	(21)
9. Optogram Fiction: Communication, Doubt, and the Fantastic	176	(17)
10. Tropical Piercings: Nationalism, Atavism, and the Eye of the Corpse	193	(13)
11. The Fin-de-Siècle Logic of the Afterimage: Hysteria, Hallucination, and Villiers's L'Eve future	206	(16)
Epilogue. The Afterimage of Reference: Optics and the nouveau roman	222	(5)
Notes	227	(34)
Index	261	(10)
Acknowledgments	271