In the Mind's Eye: The Visual Impulse in Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin

By Alexandra K. Wettlaufer

This comparative, interdisciplinary study investigates the relationship between literature and the visual arts in France and Britain from 1750-1900. Through a close examination of the prose writings of Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, read against the background of contemporary philosophy, aesthetics and theories of language, In the Mind's Eye proposes a new interpretation of the influence and rivalries underlying the development of art criticism as a genre during this period. The visual impulse - the desire to transcend the limitations of language and make the reader see - is located within the historical traditions of ekphrasis, enargeia and the paragone, while in each chapter, the individual author's theories of the mind, memory and imagination provide a critical framework for his stylistic experiments. In the Mind's Eye presents an in-depth analysis of the cultural, theoretical and aesthetic implications of artistic border crossings, and by contextualizing the movement toward visual/verbal hybridity in the fiction and criticism of Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin, brings new perspectives to nineteenth-century studies in art and literature.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9042010355
• ISBN13: 9789042010352
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: BRILL
• Length: 310 Pages
• Weight: 0.96 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"