Semi-Detached: The Aesthetics of Virtual Experience since Dickens

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Description

When you are half lost in a work of art, what happens to the half left behind Semi-Detached delves into this state of being: what it means to be within and without our social and physical milieu, at once interacting and drifting away, and how it affects our ideas about aesthetics. The allure of many modern aesthetic experiences, this book argues,

Reviews

"This wide-ranging and informative book offers a valuable guide to the nature of aesthetic experience that is rooted in, yet extends beyond, the literature and art of the nineteenth century. A book preoccupied with distance, it manages to cover a great deal of territory."---Alison Byerly, Review 19
"That even ordinary readers oscillate between immersion in a fictional world and awareness of their place outside it is an attractive notion. . . . Plotzs book demonstrates the rich and varied aesthetic effects which artists have discovered within this twilight zone, and how we might similarly use it in our reading approaches."---Milan Terlunen, Oxonian Review
"The book marvelously captures the feeling of being in the world. Plotz compellingly and artfully shows why reading feels so integral to living."---Jonathan Farina, Victorian Review
"In this lively and thought-provoking account, Plotz invites us to become more aware of our own positions as readers, and reveals the intellectual rewards for doing so."---Jonathan Buckmaster, Dickens Quarterly
"Semi-Detached is a challenging and highly rewarding account, which illuminates a central but until now underexplored aspect of aesthetic experience."---Karin Koehler, Modern Language Review

Author Bio

John Plotz is professor of Victorian literature at Brandeis University. His books include The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics, Portable Property: Victorian Culture on the Move (Princeton), and a young-adult novel, Time and the Tapestry: A William Morris Adventure. Plotz is the editor of the B-Sides series at Public Books.