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Virtual environments in the nineteenth-century : the spectacle of old London
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Smyth, Patricia (2023) Virtual environments in the nineteenth-century : the spectacle of old London. European Journal of English Studies, 27 (2). pp. 228-257. doi:10.1080/13825577.2023.2282187 ISSN 1382-5577.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2023.2282187
Abstract
This article considers the appeal of immersive recreations of old London for nineteenth-century audiences. When discussed by scholars now, they are most often presented as conduits of official ideology engaged in promoting a triumphalist narrative of bourgeois ascendance. Here, I explore their appeal to popular audiences, arguing that they presented a more ambivalent set of meanings than is generally recognised and highlighting instances in which the beholders’ experience departed from the stated intentions of the makers or organisers. The article draws out the pervasiveness of the riverside motif, which I argue carried a subtext of yearning for a lost harmony between urban and natural environments in the modern metropolis. The immersive illusionism of these reconstructions has been associated with the idea of “passive” spectatorship in which the viewer is enthralled and their critical faculties dulled or immobilised. I argue against this that the immediacy of old London attractions allowed them to become part of the dream geography of modern spectators severed from their own past. As “mind’s eye” images, they functioned as phantasmagoric interstitial spaces that could be called upon to inform and transform the real urban environment, and in which emotions such as loss, trauma and desire could be worked out through the free play of the imagination.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > Theatre and Performance Studies | ||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | European Journal of English Studies | ||||||||||||
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis | ||||||||||||
ISSN: | 1382-5577 | ||||||||||||
Official Date: | 2023 | ||||||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 27 | ||||||||||||
Number: | 2 | ||||||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 228-257 | ||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/13825577.2023.2282187 | ||||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||
Re-use Statement: | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in European Journal of English Studies on [date of publication], available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/[Article DOI].” | ||||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||||||
Description: | Special issue on ‘Interstitial Spaces’. |
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Date of first compliant deposit: | 21 November 2023 | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 April 2024 | ||||||||||||
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