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The Object of Art
The Theory of Illusion in Eighteenth-Century France

Dr Hobson analyses how art is perceived in the eighteenth-century and opens an important perspective for the study of Romanticism and Realism.

Marian Hobson (Author)

9780521115025, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 June 2009

408 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.3 cm, 0.51 kg

Are works of art imitations? If so, what exactly do they imitate? Should an artist remind his audience that what it is perceiving is in fact artifice, or should he try above all to persuade it to accept the illusion as reality? Questions such as these, which have dominated aesthetic theory since the Greeks, were debated with extraordinary vigour and ingenuity in eighteenth-century France. In this book Dr Hobson analyses these debates, focusing in turn on painting, the novel, drama, poetry and music. In each case she relates theory to contemporary works of art by Watteau, Chardin, Diderot, Beaumarchais, Gluck and many others. She shows that disputes within the theory of each art centred upon the nature of the perceiver's attention. Dr Hobson provides a method of mapping the changes in artistic style which took place as the century advanced. In discussing such conceptual transformations Dr Hobson opens an important perspective for the study of Romanticism and Realism.

General editor's preface
Foreword
Introduction
Part I. Illusion and Art: from the Truth of Imitation to the Imitation of Truth
Part II. Illusion and Form in the Novel
Part III. Illusion and the Theatre
Part IV. Illusion and Theories of Poetry: from Fictions to Forgeries
Part V. Illusion as subjectivity: Theories of Music
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD]

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