Proto-Cinematic Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction
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The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Fall 12-2016 Moving Words/Motion Pictures: Proto-Cinematic Narrative In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction Kara Marie Manning University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Other Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Manning, Kara Marie, "Moving Words/Motion Pictures: Proto-Cinematic Narrative In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction" (2016). Dissertations. 906. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/906 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MOVING WORDS/MOTION PICTURES: PROTO-CINEMATIC NARRATIVE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION by Kara Marie Manning A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School and the Department of English at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: ________________________________________________ Dr. Eric L.Tribunella, Committee Chair Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Monika Gehlawat, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Phillip Gentile, Committee Member Assistant Professor, Mass Communication and Journalism ________________________________________________ Dr. Nicolle M. Jordan, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Alexandra R. Valint, Committee Member Assistant Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Karen S. Coats Dean of the Graduate School December 2016 COPYRIGHT BY Kara Marie Manning 2016 Published by the Graduate School ABSTRACT MOVING WORDS/MOTION PICTURES: PROTO-CINEMATIC NARRATIVE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION by Kara Marie Manning December 2016 In the broadest sense, this project is about nineteenth-century narrative texts and optical toys, or those devices that were originally created to demonstrate scientific knowledge related to vision but that would also become popular for home and public consumption. I argue that nineteenth-century British writers borrowed and adapted the visual effects of such toys, making fiction as participatory as the toys themselves in the development of image culture and the viewing practices that would become necessary for the production and dissemination of cinema in the early twentieth century. Narrative fiction, then, should be considered along with the other precursors of filmic technology as a form of the proto-cinematic, a term I use as media scholars do—to describe devices integral to film history but that also each had a cultural impact in its own unique way. To demonstrate and support this argument, my project first introduces readers to a range of proto-cinematic technologies, toys that were important during the nineteenth century, and establishes these as a lens through which we might read Victorian narratives. The subsequent chapters offer close readings that delineate my proposed methodology; texts include Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby, Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project began to germinate in the summer of 2010 when I had the good fortune to study abroad in London with Dr. Jameela Lares, to whom I’d first like to express my thanks. The children’s literature course I took with Dr. Lares that summer long ago resulted in a paper about Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, the shifting interest the books reveal about moving images, and Tim Burton’s then-recent Alice film. Encouraged by Dr. Lares, I sought publication and eventually found it with Neo-Victorian Studies (NVS) in 2011. I must therefore also acknowledge that portions of Chapters I and IV of the current project first appeared in an earlier form in my essay “‘That’s the Effect of Living Backwards’: Technological Change, Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books, and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland,” which was included in a special issue of NVS titled “Spectacles and Things: Visual and Material Culture and/in Neo-Victorianism (volume 4, issue 2). Thanks to NVS General Editor, Marie-Luise Kohlke, for allowing contributors to reuse their work, in part or in full, after twelve months. I must also express my gratitude to the director and staff of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, housed at the University of Exeter. In the summer of 2011, another bout of good fortune allowed me to conduct archival research for my dissertation at the Museum, which was then called the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture. The assistance I received aided me in navigating the massive collections and helped me to gain imperative first-hand experience with a number of proto-cinematic apparatus, including kaleidoscopes, stereoscopes, flip books, and magic lantern slides. I’m so grateful I was able to learn a great deal not only about optical toys, but also about the process of conducting research of an archival and material nature. iii Of course, this dissertation would not have been completed without the cooperation of my committee members, and I have broken with the custom of thanking them first only to take a more chronological approach to the many acknowledgments demanded by a project of such long gestation. I wish to convey my sincere appreciation to my committee chair, Dr. Eric Tribunella: I thank you for your endless patience, for your helpful feedback, and for your continued guidance at all stages of this process. Your willingness to read, discuss, and champion my work even when I was floundering in it has meant so much to me. Many thanks are also due to the other members of my committee: Drs. Monika Gehlawat, Phillip Gentile, Nicolle Jordan, and Alexandra Valint, I am so pleased that you all contributed to my project, and I am obliged for your support and encouragement over the past several years. Your generous suggestions and commentary have challenged me to bring this project to its final form. There are so many friends and colleagues, old and new, near and far, that I must also acknowledge, though I trust they already know how deeply I value their diverse roles in my life and in the life of this project. Nevertheless, to Alli, Allison, Bryan, Charles, Greg, James, Jeanne, Jen, Jolene, Jon, Molly, Nicole, Paige, Sarah, Stephanie, Tanja, Trevor: thank you for the constant (if sometimes distant) succor. Your words—in person, via text, on the phone—have been such a help to me. And to my recently acquired colleagues and students at Schenectady County Community College: I am so appreciative of the ongoing support I have received at SCCC over the last year, and I am so glad to be working among you all. Finally, the members of my family deserve ample gratitude: your love encourages, inspires, and motivates me. Always. Turn the page. iv DEDICATION For my parents and my sister, who have always cultivated my curiosity, inspired my vision, and supported my every move. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................................. ix CHAPTER I – LIVING IN CINEMA: RE/ASSESSING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MOTION PICTURE TECHNOLOGY AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY NARRATIVE FICTION ..................................................................................................... 1 Monsters and Magic Lanterns ......................................................................................... 1 Contextualizing Victorian Modes of Seeing ................................................................. 11 Contextualizing Motion Picture Technology ................................................................ 17 The Thaumatrope and Persistence of Vision ............................................................ 21 Photography and the Stereoscope ............................................................................. 27 Animated Pictures and Projected Images ................................................................. 35 Fiction as Proto-Cinematic Technology ....................................................................... 41 CHAPTER II – “AS IF BY SOME STRANGE OPTICAL ILLUSION”: PERSISTENCE OF VISION AND DICKENS’S NICHOLAS NICKLEBY................................................ 46 Contextualizing Dickens and Visual Media ................................................................. 46 Reading Persistence of Vision in Nicholas Nickleby .................................................... 53 Conclusion: Blackout .................................................................................................... 68 vi CHAPTER III - “THE AIR SWARMED WITH CATHERINES”: PHOTOGRAPHIC AND STEREOSCOPIC MARGINALITY IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS....................... 74 Emily Brontë and Victorian Visual Culture .................................................................