Absorbing Hesitation: Wordsworth and the Theory of the Panorama

Abstract

I. Sublimity, Virtuality, Materiality THERE HAS BEEN A NOTICEABLE PREOCCUPATION, EVEN FASCINATION, with panorama in romantic studies. (1) At heart of this essay is claim that reason we continue to be so fascinated by specter of romantic-era panorama is that we are still caught in a romantic dilemma. The panorama compels us to confront a fundamental question of avant-garde aesthetics: what distance (or not) should art assume towards casual (mass, commercial, idiotic) enjoyment? Furthermore, aesthetic debates unleashed by panorama survive and even thrive in our own new media technology, virtual reality. The outpouring of responses of British romantic-era commentators to new representation technologies that emerged in 1790s, responses which oscillate between poles of exuberance and horror, mirror contemporary discourse of virtual reality both in terms of respective new technologies' relationship to established modes, particularly literature, and in terms of sheer extent of their powers. At both historical moments question becomes, do new representation technologies transcend aesthetic and become real? The ways in which aggregate of idea of panorama (emergent in England in 1790s) and of virtuality (a late-twentieth century idea with global implications which may be said to be latest incarnation of aesthetics) identify and perpetuate romantic positionings vis-a-vis casual enjoyment, particularly as casual enjoyment relates to mimetic representation, are my central concern here. The is implicated in this set of issues in multiple ways. First, idea of panorama evolved into a powerful foil of romantic within context of romantic-era discourse, and this dichotomy continues to influence criticism and thought about both panorama and of period. Significantly, it was slow to take form and actually emerged out of a discourse that tended to understand idioms of and as intimately connected rather than quintessentially different. Indeed, terms seem to have been, for a length of time, entirely interchangeable. Technically speaking, panorama refers to a 360-degree painting patented by Englishman Robert Barker in 1787 and first executed by him in 1792. (2) However, a recent historian of panorama confirms that the use of word 'panorama' in a broad or metaphoric sense seems to have begun almost simultaneously with invention of technological term (Oettermann 6). As such, panoramic was applied to all manner of art works in all manner of media, from print to song to dramatic performance to paint. (3) The became ubiquitous--what was panoramic was also understood to be sublime--most often by virtue of given art work's aesthetic power (to move its reader/viewer/listener) or its size (exceptionally large and diminutive alike). As such, romantic-era writers applied to works as diverse as a journal which called itself Literary Panorama, to Robert Southey's poetry, notably Kehama; (4) Schiller's dramas; Italian opera, particularly voices of castrati singers, who continued to perform in London well into nineteenth century; and visual representations as diverse as John Martin's paintings and Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg's miniature moving light-and-sound show, Eidophusikon, all of which were also understood explicitly to draw on aesthetic of sublime. The drive for disassociation of terms and was thus not initiated until well after critical discourse had become comfortable with their proximity to one another and even their synonymy. It was not until Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb introduced sublime that this relationship began to shift. (5) The material was deployed precisely to undo proximity that had developed and to make case that and are not only essentially unlike, but that former is actually antithesis of latter. …