Conclusion

Abstract

The methodology proposed in this book, embracing both phenomenological and semiotic analysis, has an application beyond a study of Edwardian spectatorship. Its interrogation of how experiences of art occur outside a direct encounter between an object and a spectator result in three key findings. First, it identifies phenomenological modes of experience in indirect encounters, for example, through text, reading and imagination. Secondly, spectatorship is cast as conditioned, as something performed, and an analysis of this serves to reveal the function of some of the literary mechanisms that persist in art writing. Thirdly, spectatorship is shown to be both private and public , personal and social, all at once. This provides a way to account for how aesthetic experiences seem to be contingent on both subjective response, and socio-cultural contexts.