The phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment

The “phantasmagoria” is a term that originally referred to the ghost lantern shows first staged in France at the end of the 18th Century by the Belgian inventor and entertainer Étienne-Gaspard Robertson. The question to be addressed in this review concerns the link between the phantasmagoria (define...

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Autore principale: Spence, C
Natura: Journal article
Lingua:English
Pubblicazione: Frontiers Media 2022
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author Spence, C
author_facet Spence, C
author_sort Spence, C
collection OXFORD
description The “phantasmagoria” is a term that originally referred to the ghost lantern shows first staged in France at the end of the 18th Century by the Belgian inventor and entertainer Étienne-Gaspard Robertson. The question to be addressed in this review concerns the link between the phantasmagoria (defined as a ghostly visual entertainment) and the multisensory sensorium (or sensory overload) of the fairground and even, in several other cases, the Gesamtkunstwerk (the German term for “the total work of art”). I would like to suggest that the missing link may involve the ghost attractions, such as Dr. Pepper's Ghost (first developed at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in London in the 1860s), and the Phantasmagoria, that were both promoted in fairgrounds across England in the closing decades of the 19th Century.
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spelling oxford-uuid:87b3e6e8-c2b1-4a57-a8de-a5f9bf1b177a2022-10-28T16:28:33ZThe phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainmentJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:87b3e6e8-c2b1-4a57-a8de-a5f9bf1b177aEnglishSymplectic ElementsFrontiers Media 2022Spence, CThe “phantasmagoria” is a term that originally referred to the ghost lantern shows first staged in France at the end of the 18th Century by the Belgian inventor and entertainer Étienne-Gaspard Robertson. The question to be addressed in this review concerns the link between the phantasmagoria (defined as a ghostly visual entertainment) and the multisensory sensorium (or sensory overload) of the fairground and even, in several other cases, the Gesamtkunstwerk (the German term for “the total work of art”). I would like to suggest that the missing link may involve the ghost attractions, such as Dr. Pepper's Ghost (first developed at the Royal Polytechnic Institute in London in the 1860s), and the Phantasmagoria, that were both promoted in fairgrounds across England in the closing decades of the 19th Century.
spellingShingle Spence, C
The phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment
title The phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment
title_full The phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment
title_fullStr The phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment
title_full_unstemmed The phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment
title_short The phantasmagoria: from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment
title_sort phantasmagoria from ghostly apparitions to multisensory fairground entertainment
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