Picturing Dissolving Views : August Strindberg and the Visual Media of His A

The subject of this study is August Strindberg's interaction with the visual media of his day. Its dual aim is to examine Strindberg's work in the light of media history and to allow Strindberg's work in turn to illuminate the media history of the fin de sikcle. Taking its cue from the commonplace scholarly observation that Strindberg's drama, particularly that of his later phase, is strikingly "cinematic", it asks: What do such comparisons really tell us about Strindberg's art and what, if anything, do they tell us about cinema? The thesis of this study is that the putatively "cinematic" style of Strindberg's writings can only be understood against the backdrop of a mass culture, oriented towards the visual sense, which was undergoing rapid expansion at the turn of the last century. At the same time as it unsettles received notions of Strindberg's drama as "cinematic", Picturing Dissolving Views: August Strindberg and the Visual Media of His Age shows how the writings of this revolutionary artist can provide fresh material for a reassessment of life in a media-saturated age.