Modern Enchantments : The Cultural Power of Secular Magic / Simon During.
During, Simon, author.
2009
GV1543 D87 2002eb
Available Online

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Title Modern Enchantments : The Cultural Power of Secular Magic / Simon During.
Author During, Simon, author.
ISBN 9780674034396
DOI https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674034396
Published Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, [2009]
Copyright ©2004
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource (352 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers 10.4159/9780674034396 doi
Call Number GV1543 D87 2002eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 793.8
Summary Magic, Simon During suggests, has helped shape modern culture. Devoted to this deceptively simple proposition, During's superlative work, written over the course of a decade, gets at the aesthetic questions at the very heart of the study of culture. How can the most ordinary arts--and by "magic," During means not the supernatural, but the special effects and conjurings of magic shows--affect people? Modern Enchantments takes us deeply into the history and workings of modern secular magic, from the legerdemain of Isaac Fawkes in 1720, to the return of real magic in nineteenth-century spiritualism, to the role of magic in the emergence of the cinema. Through the course of this history, During shows how magic performances have drawn together heterogeneous audiences, contributed to the molding of cultural hierarchies, and extended cultural technologies and media at key moments, sometimes introducing spectators into rationality and helping to disseminate skepticism and publicize scientific innovation. In a more revealing argument still, Modern Enchantments shows that magic entertainments have increased the sway of fictions in our culture and helped define modern society's image of itself.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
In HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
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Frontmatter
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1 Magic History: An Introduction
2 Enchantment and Loss: Theorizing Secular Magic
3 Egg-Bag Tricks and Electricity: The Founding of Modern Commercial Conjuring
4 Magic's Moment: The Illusion Business
5 From Magic to Film
6 Magic and Literature
7 Magic Places: The Lyceum and the Great Room, Spring Gardens
8 Spiritualism and the Birth of Optical Technologies
Notes
Index

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