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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2018

Investigating the Invisible: Optiques and Visual Culture in the French Merveilleux-Scientifique Genre (1880-1930)

Résumé

At the turn of the century, science and pseudo-science in France were interested in seeing the invisible: reading thoughts, photographing ghosts, unveiling the bodyscape, taming electricity. A little-know french literary genre, called the “merveilleux-scientifique” reflects the impact invisibility had on the imaginary. Stories written by J.-H. Rosny aîné and Maurice Renard use the metaphor of entoptic phenomena, casting shadows in the viewer’s environment (muscae volitantes, blue background, Purkinje’s tree) and atmospheric optics (double suns, mirages) to account for the presence of invisible creatures, handling men as if they were mere puppets. They are surrounding men at all time but, just as entoptic phenomena, they are only revealed by a medium of choice (gas, photography, augmented eye). It is the imperfection of the human eye that forms the basis of the narrative. This talk will focus on how physiological optics and the understanding of the subjectivization of vision gave authors and illustrators of the merveilleux-scientifique genre a new vocabulary to imagine creatures that are no longer ghosts, but aliens.
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Dates et versions

hal-03628655 , version 1 (02-04-2022)

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  • HAL Id : hal-03628655 , version 1

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Fleur Hopkins-Loféron. Investigating the Invisible: Optiques and Visual Culture in the French Merveilleux-Scientifique Genre (1880-1930). Séminaire « Art and the Senses », Jan 2018, Cambridge, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-03628655⟩
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