Baudelaire’s Media Aesthetics: The Gaze of the Flâneur and 19th Century Media

Description

Baudelaire’s Media Aesthetics situates Charles Baudelaire in the midst of 19th-century media culture. It offers a thorough study of the role of newspapers, photography, and precinematic devices in Baudelaire's writings, while also discussing the cultural history of these media generally. The book reveals that Baudelaire was not merely inspired by the new media, but that he played with them, using them as frames of perception and ways of experiencing the world. His writings demonstrate how different media respond to one another and how the conventions of one medium can be paraphrased in another medium. Accordingly, Baudelaire’s Media Aesthetics argues that Baudelaire should be seen merely as an advocate of “pure poetry,” but as a poet in a media saturated environment. It shows that mediation, montage, and movement are features that are central to Baudelaire’s aesthetics and that his modernist aesthetics can be conceived of, to a large degree, as a media aesthetics. Highlighting Baudelaire’s interaction with the media of his age, Baudelaire’s Media Aesthetics discusses the ways in which we respond to new media technology, drawing on perspectives from Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben. Combining detailed research with contemporary theory, the book opens up new perspectives on Baudelaire’s writings, the figure of the flâneur, and modernist aesthetics. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments List of illustrations Introduction The gaze of the flâneur and nineteenth-century media Paris: Capital of modernity A lyric poet in the age of new media Art and technology: Theories of mediation Media technology and ideology criticism Media technology and aesthetics: Theories of mediation Dispositives: Frames of perception Play in the era of technological reproducibility Baudelaire’s media aesthetics 1. Newspapers A duel: Journalism versus poetry Newspaper aesthetics Interaction: The circulation between literature and journalism A dedicated newspaper reader A letter to the editor Making sense of modern life: Between anecdote and allegory Poetry goes incognito 2. Photographs The cult of images Framed vision: Windows and photography Reading/developing images Visual desire: Portrait photography and fetishism Traffic in souls: Arresting/escaping identity Making images move 3. Precinematic devices Opening a new field of vision Optical toys as initiation into art The modern experience: Flickering life and movement How to capture movement? Kaleidoscopic vision Virtual images: The visual attraction of modern life 4. Corporeality The bodily apparatus: Perception and technology The impulsion to act Violence: Bodies in motion Enjoying the crowd is an art Multitude: Crowds, commonplaces, and mass communication 5. Toys Interfaces: Toys, dispositives, and transitional objects The toy fairy: A childhood memory How toys come alive The uncertain status of objects Play and profanation 6. Media imagery and modernity Baudelaire’s media aesthetics recapitulated Media imagery in theories of modernity Marx: The phantasmagoria of commodities Benjamin: Paris as a phantasmagoria Freud: The psyche as a photographic apparatus Benjamin: Time as a photographer Benjamin: The stereoscope and the dialectical image Benjamin: The kaleidoscope must be smashed Media aesthetics and modernity Notes Bibliography Index