The Book of Miracles - and other miraculous publications

Dear list members,

 

Fantastic imaginary round the 18^th & 19^th century is one of the Visual Media website main focuses.

Depicting wonder, marvels, the supernatural and horror throughout the history of visual media entertainment is literally a haunting theme.

The same is true for the frightening 16^th century illustrations in a recently discovered Renaissance manuscript reproduced in facsimile by Taschen under the title:

'The Book of Miracles'.
See http://www.visual-media.eu/publications_books_popular-arts.html

This is a great early example helping to understand of the Paradox of Fear: 'I'm afraid, therefore I enjoy'.

The manuscript starts depicting miracles in Old Testament times and continue to illustrate miraculous events from Antiquity, Middle and late Middle Ages right up to the middle of the 16^th century.
The quality and imagination of these images is superb !!!

 

Regarding such an early and rich visual information source of 'the fantastic' it is no wonder we see a myriad of frightening themes in old visual media techniques (e.g. The Lantern of Fear, the Fantasmagoria, photographs of ghosts, etc.), forerunners of today's old & modern popular media, such as interactive violent computer games situated in imaginary frightening worlds.

 

'I'm afraid, therefore I enjoy' the history of entertaining technical media characterized by often miraculous subjects.

'He who does not honour the (often frightening) past is not worthy of the present' is also a true statement in media archaeology.

By this as it may, the large format ‘Book of Miracles’ is a great pictorial source which also helps the media archaeologist to understand the origins of wondrous themes often displayed by early media devices.

Taschen recently also published the complete works of Hieronymus Bosch in a magnum sized book, another early sample of depicting ‘the fantastic’.

More information on the same page link provided above.

 

As a reminder, the most fantastic photobook of last year ‘Diableries, Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell’ is one of the top selling publications on Amazon.

See http://www.visual-media.eu/publications_books_photo.html

Obviously you can also order it directly from the publisher http://www.diableries.co.uk/

 

For those with an academic interest in the ‘Paradox of Fear’, have a look at the book ‘Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers’ on the following link:

http://www.visual-media.eu/publications_books_cinema.html

 

Of course there also is the recent ‘Ghostly Apparitions, German Idealism, the Gothic Novel and Optical Media’.

Have a search on the five thematic book pages of Visual Media and discover more fascinating literature in my library, hopefully also soon in yours.

Start here http://www.visual-media.eu/publications.html

 

Please forward this e-mail to booklovers searching for books you rarely find in the regular book market nor library.

 

Hope you will share my fears and order these visual entertaining books …

 

Thomas
www.visual-media.eu