Body Criticism – Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art & Medicine: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (The MIT Press) - Softcover

Stafford, Barbara Maria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262691655 ISBN 13: 9780262691659

Publisher: MIT Press, 1993

Synopsis

In this erudite and profusely illustrated history of perception, Barbara Stafford explores a remarkable set of body metaphors deriving from both aesthetic and medical practices that were developed during the enlightenment for making visible the unseeable aspects of the world. While she focuses on these metaphors as a reflection of the changing attitudes toward the human body during the period of birth of the modern world, she also presents a strong argument for our need to recognize the occurrence of a profound revolution-a radical shift from a textbased to a visually centered culture. Stafford agues, in fact, that modern societies need to develop innovative, nonlinguistic paradigms and to train a broad public in visual aptitude.

About this title

Review

Stafford's book is... full of intriguing, even intoxicating, ideas. For anyone involved with images it opens unexplored avenues of thought, forcing one to question traditional assumptions about both images and text.

--Helene Roberts, Visual Resources

Synopsis

In this illustrated history of perception, Barbara Stafford explores a set of body metaphors deriving from both aesthetic and medical practices that were developed during the enlightenment for making visible the unseeable aspects of the world. While she focuses on these metaphors as a reflection of the changing attitudes toward the human body during the period of birth of the modern world, she also presents a strong argument for our need to recognize the occurrence of a profound revolution - a shift from a text-based to a visually centred culture. Stafford argues, in fact, that modern societies need to develop innovative, nonlinguistic paradigms and to train a broad public in visual aptitude.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0262691655
• ISBN 13: 9780262691659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 612