Abstract
In 1844, in the first photographically illustrated book, The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot includes a perplexing chapter, “A Scene in a Library,” which couples a photograph of a bookshelf with a seemingly unrelated passage of text. Here, Talbot speculates about a fantastical voyeuristic scenario involving a proto-night vision device and its literary possibilities. In this chapter, it is shown that the vexing nature of “A Scene in a Library,” particularly Talbot’s pairing of invisible light with books, stems from the challenge that light beyond the visible range of the spectrum, such as ultraviolet and infrared, posed to the dominant epistemology of the time. His recourse to a literary form of invisibility was an attempt to reconcile the incommensurability of invisible light with the prevailing episteme structured around tropes of visible light and the eye.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Works Cited
Armstrong, Carol, Scenes in a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843–1875. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1998.
Benjamin, Walter, “Little History of Photography.” Translated by Michael William Jennings and Marcus Paul Bullock. In Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 1931–1934. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005: 507–30.
Blanchot, Maurice, The Infinite Conversation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.
Crary, Jonathan, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 19th Century. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.
Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Derrida, Jacques, Dissemination. Translated by Barbara Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass. London: Routledge, 2001.
Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Herschel, John, A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1831.
Herschel, William, “Investigation of the Powers of the Prismatic Colours to Heat and Illuminate Objects; With Remarks, That Prove the Different Refrangibility of Radiant Heat. To Which Is Added, an Inquiry into the Method of Viewing the Sun Advantageously, with Telescopes of Large Apertures and High Magnifying Powers. By William Herschel, LL. D. F. R. S.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 90 (1800): 255–83.
Irigaray, Luce, Speculum of the Other Woman. Translated by Gillian C. Gill. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Jay, Martin, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Kofman, Sarah, Camera Obscura: Of Ideology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1978.
LeGrand, Y., and S.G. ElHage, Physiological Optics. Berlin: Springer, 2013.
Levin, David Michael, Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Poe, Edgar Allan, The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales. New York City: Modern Library, 2006.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. New York City: Citadel Press, 2001.
Talbot, William, The Pencil of Nature. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969.
Tiffany, Daniel, Infidel Poetics: Riddles, Nightlife, Substance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Vasseleu, Cathryn, Textures of Light: Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau Ponty. London: Routledge, 1998.
Williams, Linda, “Corporealized Observers: Visual Pornographies and the ‘Carnal Density of Vision.’” In Fugitive Images: From Photography to Video, edited by Patrice Petro. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995: 3–37.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Laskin, A. (2019). Literary Device: Invisible Light and a Photo of Photography. In: Grønstad, A., Vågnes, Ø. (eds) Invisibility in Visual and Material Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16291-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16291-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-16290-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-16291-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)