TAILIEUCHUNG - POE: OPTICS, HYSTERIA, AND AESTHETIC THEORY

This landmark principle, "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves," was stated by Eli Siegel, the American poet, critic, and educator, who founded Aesthetic Realism. It is the basis of the museum art and anthropology classes we teach together. And this principle, we've seen, is the means for people to have large emotions from the art of every continent—including styles unfamiliar to them— and to see people of other cultures with authentic depth and kindness | Rae Beth Gordon POE OPTICS HYSTERIA AND AESTHETIC THEORY There is reason it is said in the roasting of eggs and there is philosophy even in furniture. ----E. A. Poe The1 philosophy of Furniture. The science of optics plays an essential role in Poe s psychopathology of perception. Optical tricks in the tales are often caused or encouraged by the decor and in fact the scientific study of perception not only drew on optical phenomena but later in the century on the presence of these phenomena in decorative objects. Optical illusions or fallacies in vision are in fact subtle variations on a problem that occupied psychiatrists psychologists and philosophers throughout the 19th century the problem of distinguishing illusions of the senses from hallucinations. From the 1820s to the 1840s important advances in optics were being made and popular as well as intellectual interest was high. As C. J. Wright points out in his 1980 article The Spectre of Science Optical Phenomena and the Romantic Imagination 1 the very uncertainty surrounding some of the laws of optics as well as the advances in the field were responsible for this keen interest. The element of uncertainty would of course play into the mysteries of the Gothic tale and the mysteries of the mind and perception. Poe s familiarity with the work of Sir David Brewster author of Letters on Natural Magic 1832 A Treatise on Optics 1835 published in America in 1843 and inventor of the kaleidoscope 1816 and the stereoscope 1838 is The sorts of prized optical phenomena in nature in the early 19th century included parhelia circular rings lunar haloes inversion of views for example along the Firth of Forth the aurora borealis one could re-create this effect by directing sunlight through a prism into vapors of wine spirits the Fata Morgana a well-known optical illusion coronas and glories the ap- 1. To Wright s examples I would add the analogy of the German psychologist poet and metaphysician Lotze Medical .

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