Artificial Generation : : Photogenic French Literature and the Prehistory of Cinematic Modernity / / Christina Parker-Flynn.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• VerfasserIn: Parker-Flynn, Christina,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2021]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (236 p.) :; 20 b-w images

Artificial Generation: Photogenic French Literature and the Prehistory of Cinematic Modernity investigates the intersection of film theory and nineteenth-century literature, arguing that the depth of amalgamation that occurred within literary representation during this era aims to replicate an illusion of life and its sensations, in ways directly related to broader transitions into our modern cinematic age. A key part of this evolution in representation relies on the continual re-emergence of the artificial woman as longstanding expression of masculine artistic subjectivity, which, by the later nineteenth century, becomes a photographic and filmic drive. Moving through the beginning of film history, from Georges Méliès and other “silent” filmmakers in the 1890s, into more contemporary movies, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the book analyzes how films are often structured around the prior century’s mythic and literary principles, which now serve as foundation for film as medium—a phantom form for life’s re-presentation. Artificial Generation provides a crucial reassessment of the longstanding, mutual exchange between cinematic and literary reproduction, offering an innovative perspective on the proto-cinematic imperative of simulation within nineteenth-century literary symbolism.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction: Modernity’s Reori-gene-ation -- Part 1 Literary Simulations -- 1 The Literary Afterlife: Théophile Gautier’s Aesthetic of Resurrection -- 2 Book of Genesis: The Villi-fication of Woman in L’Ève future -- 3 Salomania: The Unnatural Order of (Beautiful) Things in Oscar Wilde’s Salomé -- 4 Statuesque Cinema: Adapting Literature, Animating Film -- 5 See-Through Woman: Reproductive Delusions in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo -- Epilogue: Still Mother— Adapting to Life in Blade Runner 2049 -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index