Seeing Things

Alan Ackerman is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.

• AcknowledgementsIntroduction1 A Spirit of Giving in A Midsummer Night 's Dream2 Visualizing Hamlet's Ghost: The Theatrical Spirit of Modern Subjectivity3 Samuel Beckett's spectres du noir: The Being of Painting and The Flatness of Film4 The Spirit of Toys: Resurrection, Redemption, and Consumption in Toy Story, Toy Story 2, and BeyondWorks CitedIndex

‘In these elegant essays, at once theatrical and philosophical, Alan Ackerman offers a probing meditation on sight and on the lingering mysteries of the invisible.’ - Martin Puchner, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University and author of The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy ‘I was consistently engaged and fascinated by Alan Ackerman’s outstanding book, Seeing Things. What is most exciting about this study is Ackerman’s perceptions: through compelling intellectual inquiry, he takes the reader on a wonderful journey through his complex and inquisitive mind.’ - David Krasner, Department of Performing Arts, Emerson College ‘… Alan Ackerman confronts us with the spectral question: to see or not to see? From Plato to Ibsen and Beckett to Disney Toy Story movies, you're asked to rehearse perception – philosophically, aesthetically, even metaphysically – in the mind’s eye.’ - Herbert Blau, Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities, University of Washington