The Aesthetics of the Undersea

by Cohen, Margaret

Type Book

Rate 0.0 /5

Details

Files

Reviews

Download

Title Statements

Full title :The Aesthetics of the Undersea

Summary

Among global environments, the undersea is unique in the challenges it poses - and the opportunities it affords - for sensation, perception, inquiry, and fantasy. The Aesthetics of the Undersea draws case studies in such potencies from the subaqueous imaginings of Western culture, and from the undersea realities that have inspired them. The chapters explore aesthetic engagements with underwater worlds, and sustain a concern with submarine "sense," in several meanings of that word: when submerged, faculties and fantasies transform, confronting human subjects with their limitations while enlarging the apparent scope of possibility and invention. Terrestrially-established categories and contours shift, metamorphose, or fail altogether to apply. As ocean health acquires an increasing share of the global environmental imaginary, the histories of submarine sense manifest ever-greater importance, and offer resources for documentation as well as creativity. The chapters deal with the sensory, material, and formal provocations of the underwater environment, and consider the consequences of such provocations for aesthetic and epistemological paradigms. Contributors, who hail from the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, include scholars of literature, art, new media, music and history. Cases studies range from baroque and rococo fantasies to the gothic, surrealism, modernism, and contemporary installation art. By juxtaposing early modern and Enlightenment contexts with matters of more recent - and indeed contemporary - importance, The Aesthetics of the Undersea establishes crucial relations among temporally remote entities, which will resonate across the environmental humanities.

Edition Statements

Publication Date:2018.

Publication Statements

Publisher(s):Routledge
Place of Publication:Milton
Language:eng
Publication Date:2018.

The Physical Object

Description:1 online resource (269 pages)

Edition Identifiers

ISBN:9780429814389, 0429814380, 9780429814372, 0429814372, 9780429814365, 0429814364, 9780429444203, 0429444206
DOI:10.4324/9780429444203
oclc:on1080432822
LC Classification:BH301
Dewey Decimal:809/.9332162

Cover; Half Title; Series Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; List of figures; List of contributors; Acknowledgments; "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich; Introduction: Submarine aesthetics; Notes; Further reading; 1. The aesthetics of the early modern grotto and the advent of an empirical nature; Notes; 2. The porcellaneous ocean: Matter and meaning in the rococo undersea; The rococo view; Porcelain at the sea-bottom; Ornamental behavior; Rococo growths; Notes; 3. The logic of the invisible: Perceiving the submarine world in French Enlightenment geography

Visualizing the world: finding a language of natureDepicting the invisible: rational visions of the undersea; Conclusion: facing the obscurities of vision; Notes; 4. Understanding the loss of colour; Notes; 5. Hydromania: The social history and literary significance of Romantic swimming; Notes; 6. The great melancholy mother: Michelet's evolutionary ocean in The Sea; Notes; 7. "The Forsaken Merman," "The Little Mermaid," and early modernism: Undersea imagery for the dissociation and dissolution of culture; Notes

8. Encountering living corals: A nineteenth-century scientist and artist reveals the underwate…

Subjects

blue humanities Ecocriticism Environment (Aesthetics) environmental history Environmental Humanities Environmental literature environnement -- esthétique Mer -- Miscellanées Mer et civilisation NATURE -- Ecology Nature (Aesthetics) Nature (Esthétique) Ocean Ocean -- Miscellanea Ocean and civilization submarine submarine humanities Trivia and miscellanea