[Download] "Conjuring the Spirit: Victorian Poetry, Culture, And Technology." by Victorian Poetry # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Conjuring the Spirit: Victorian Poetry, Culture, And Technology.
- Author : Victorian Poetry
- Release Date : January 22, 2003
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 185 KB
Description
The ubiquity of fiction by the late nineteenth century suggests the decline of poetry from its central cultural status as a public discourse and masculine preserve of "a man speaking to men." (1) A standard explanation for the decrease in verse publication and the rise of the novel during the course of the century has been that science and technological progress replaced poetry as the discourse that captured the public imagination, while the cultural critic came to overshadow the poet as the aristocrat of public intellectuals. However, this account fails to register the paradoxical nature of poetry's cultural status in Victorian times: literal marginalization in the marketplace was often translated through aesthetic appreciation into the social prestige of "high" art. (2) If the future of Victorian poetry is to differ from the narrative of its past, as I think it surely must, one avenue to be explored is necessarily the complex dynamics between Victorian poetry and technology. Work thus far on the relation between Victorian literature and technology for the most part has tended to converge with the culture and society tradition which subsumes the issue of technology within the class and gender critique of the capitalist economic system. When technology is conceptualized separately at all, it is often cited in terms, deeply rooted in the nineteenth century, that posit it as a corrupting influence on culture. It is time, I think, to look at the issue differently. There is an alternative narrative of culture to be written and new methodologies to be applied when technology in the full range of its meaning is reinserted into literary history. Given that the nineteenth century was a time of tremendous and exciting proliferation of new industrial and communications technologies, there is much to be done by simply considering poetry in historical relation to the vast array of Victorian inventions such as the stereoscope, kaleidoscope, phonograph, computational machines, photography, and film. However, we need to conduct such studies with a theoretical awareness that takes us beyond the limited sense of technology as instrument and instrumentality (or tool and discipline), and we can begin by returning to the etymological origins of the word technology itself. In addition, contemporary concepts of informatics, media, and discourse networks can help us to understand better the reception and circulation of poetry. Whereas previously we might have examined the relation between Victorian poetry and technology, it is time now to address Victorian poetry as itself a technology.