Immersion and Distance

Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-90-420-3657-4
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 6, 390 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 760 g

Reihe: Studies in Intermediality

Readers who appear to be lost in a storyworld, members of theatre or cinema audiences who are moved to tears while watching a performance, beholders of paintings who are absorbed by the representations in front of them, players of computer games entranced by the fictional worlds in which they interactively participate – all of these mental states of imaginative immersion are variants of ‘aesthetic illusion’, as long as the recipients, although thus immersed, are still residually aware that they are experiencing not real life but life-like representations created by artefacts.
Aesthetic illusion is one of the most forceful effects of reception processes in representational media and thus constitutes a powerful allurement to expose ourselves, again and again to, e.g., printed stories, pictures and films, be they factual or fictional. In contrast to traditional discussions of this phenomenon, which tend to focus on one medium or genre from one discipline only, the present volume explores aesthetic illusion, as well as its reverse side, the breaking of illusion, from a highly innovative multidisciplinary and transmedial perspective. The essays assembled stem from disciplines that range from literary theory to art history and include contributions on drama, lyric poetry, the visual arts, photography, architecture, instrumental music and computer games, as well as reflections on the cognitive foundations of aesthetic illusion from an evolutionary perspective. The contributions to individual media and aspects of aesthetic illusion are prefaced by a detailed theoretical introduction.
Owing to its transmedial and multidisciplinary scope, the volume will be relevant to students and scholars from a wide variety of fields: cultural history at large, intermediality and media studies, as well as, more particularly, literary studies, music, film, and art history.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Wolf, Werner

Bernhart, Walter

Mahler, Andreas

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theatertheorie, Ästhetik des Theaters, Theaterkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Introduction
Werner Wolf: Aesthetic Illusion
Aesthetic Illusion – Theoretical Perspectives
Katja Mellmann: On the Emergence of Aesthetic Illusion: An Evolutionary Perspective
Richard J. Gerrig and Matthew A. Bezdek: The Role of Participation in Aesthetic Illusion
Kendall L. Walton: Pictures and Hobby Horses: Make-Believe beyond Childhood
Marie-Laure Ryan: Impossible Worlds and Aesthetic Illusion
Aesthetic Illusion in Literature
Andreas Mahler: Aesthetic Illusion in Theatre and Drama: An Attempt at Application
Werner Wolf: Aesthetic Illusion as an Effect of Lyric Poetry?
Aesthetic Illusion in the Visual Arts
Götz Pochat: Aesthetic Illusion and the Breaking of Illusion in Painting (Fourteenth to Twentieth Centuries)
Katharina Bantleon and Ulrich Tragatschnig: Wilful Deceptions: Aesthetic Illusion at the Interface of Painting, Photography and Digital Images
Aesthetic Illusion in Various Other Media
Jocelyn Cammack: Aesthetic Illusion and the Breaking of Illusion in Ambiguous Film Sequences
Laura Bieger: Architectures of Immersion: The Material Fictions of the ‘New’ Las Vegas
Christian Wessely: Columns of Figures as Sources of Aesthetic Illusion: Browser-Based Multiplayer Online Games
Walter Bernhart: Aesthetic Illusion in Instrumental Music?
Notes on Contributors
Index