Differential Imagery Experience and Ut Pictura Poesis in the 18th-century
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11936748 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Mackisack (0000-0001-5104-4706, Institute of Health Research, University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 319-331 |
| Publication date | 2016-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-0188 • E-ISSN: 1743-2790 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03080188.2016.1252995 |
| OpenAlex | W2571014098 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 25 |
That the ability to visualise, to see with ‘the mind's eye’, varies between individuals has been known since Francis Galton reported on the results of his ‘Breakfast Table’ questionnaire in 1880. Research in the ensuing years has supported what Galton's surveys suggested: that the vividness of the population's mental imagery lies across a spectrum, with small percentages at the extremes being bereft of imagery or visualising with near percept-like quality. This paper explores what impact this factor of individual psychological difference had on the literary-theoretical debate over ut pictura poesis — whether poetry can or should emulate painting — as it culminated in the 18th-century. After making the case for personal experience of imagery being an influencing factor on the position that critics in the period took on ut pictura poesis, the paper concludes by engaging with the methodological and conceptual difficulties — for the philosophy of science as much as for literary theory and history — that the line of argument produces
Aesthetics · Argument (complex analysis · Art · Art history · Cognition · Epistemology · Literature · Mental image · Painting · Percept · Perception · Period (music · Poetry · Population · Sociology · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Historical and Literary Studies · Philosophy · Psychology · Visual Culture and Art Theory
Seeing and Visualizing
Iconology
Perplexities of Consciousness
Lives without imagery – Congenital aphantasia
Philosophical Practice
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
Ut Pictura Poesis… A History of the Topos and the Problem
The Sister Arts. The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray
The Contractility of Burke's Sublime and Heterodoxies in Medicine and Art
Visual Imagery Differences in the Recall of Pictures
The Ideology of the Aesthetic
The Physiological Sublime
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |