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The sea and seeing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2009

Abstract

A shift in seeing took place in Western Europe, marked by the transition from the geometrical optics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the physiological optics of the nineteenth century. Within the same time-frame, the sea (like the mountains) came to be valued as an entity in itself, and not just as a source of challenge, danger or ecstasy. The coupling of these two phenomena makes for the tracking of parallel effects: the diminution of anthropocentricity in the change from monocular to binocular vision; the substitution of plurality of point of view for the recessional perspective of the Renaissance; and a revisitation of the interrelationships and metamorphoses characteristic of the Baroque in terms of new polyvalent or interdisciplinary approaches.

Information

Type
Focus: The Imagination and the Sea
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2000

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