Moving image culture seems to privilege the instantly identifiable: the recognizable face, the well-timed stunt, the perfectly synchronized line of dialogue. Yet perfect, in-focus visibility does not come 'naturally' to the moving image, and if there is one visual effect the eye of the camera can record better than the human eye it is blur. Looking beyond popular media to works of experimental cinema and video art, this groundbreaking collection addresses the aesthetics and politics of moving images in states of decay, distortion, indistinctness and fragmentation. A range of international scholars examines what is at stake in these images' sometimes radical foregrounding of materiality and mediation, or of evanescence and spectrality, as well as their challenging of the dominant position accorded to 'legible' images. How have artists and filmmakers rendered the 'indefinite' image, and what questions does it pose? With a range of approaches, from aesthetics to phenomenology to production studies, the authors in this volume investigate techniques, themes and concepts that emerge from this wilful excavation of the moving image's material base.

In a probing analysis that has broad implications for theories of reading, Bernard J. Paris explores how personal needs and changes in his own psychology have affected his responses to George Eliot over the years. Having lost his earlier enthusiasm for her "Religion of Humanity," he now appreciates the psychological intuitions that are embodied in her brilliant portraits of characters and relationships. Concentrating on Eliot's most impressive psychological novels, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, Paris focuses on her detailed portrayals of major characters in an effort to recover her intuitions and appreciate her mimetic achievement. He argues that although she intended for her characters to provide confirmation of her views, she was instead led to deeper, more enduring truths, although she did not consciously comprehend the discoveries she had made. Like her characters, Paris argues, these truths must be disengaged from her rhetoric in order to be perceived.

Europas historie, Frankrigs historie, fransk militærhistorie og krigshistorie - amerikansk biografi om Napoleon (1769-1821), den store franske kejser, hærfører, soldat, militær leder, feltherre, politiker og statsmand, som i den grad ændrede Europakortet og Frankrigs historie, og ikke mindst militærhistorien med sine forbløffende, forbavsende og brilliante sejre. Napoleon er beundret og hadet og forkætret som få, og der er skrevet så utroligt mange bøger om ham, også meget vås; dette 4-bindsværk hører til i den absolut lødige del af Napoleonslitteraturen. Stilen er fin og meget bredt fortællende, men historisk absolut korrekt, det forfriskende ved værket er den amerikanske synsvinkel, og de sidste kapitler som forsøger at beskrive Napoleon og hans betydning for Frankrig og Europa i en bredere sammenhæng. Det allerbedste ved værket er dog illustrationerne. Billedmaterialet er meget fint, smukke reproduktioner af samtidige kunstnere, dels med Napoleon selv, og hans familie og forskellige "gribende" episoder i hans brogede liv, og dels de mange krigsbilleder, med forskellige krigsepisoder og krigsoplevelser med franske soldater og den franske hær, herunder en del fine uniformsbilleder og slagscener. Værket er i 4 dele, i stort format, udkom i 1894 (denne udgave fra 1896) og er skrevet af en amerikansk historieprofessor ved Princeton Universitetet. Hvert bind har en liste over illustrationerne, og udførlige kapiteloverskrifter med mange stikordsindgange til værket, desuden samlet register til alle 4 bind bagerst i bd.4.