Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and the Hermeneutic Spiral

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and the Hermeneutic Spiral

Hardback (21 Jul 2017)

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Publisher's Synopsis

This book offers a new approach to film studies by showing how our brains use our interpretations of various other films in order to understand Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Borrowing from behavioral psychology, cognitive science and philosophy, author Robert J. Belton seeks to explain differences of critical opinion as inevitable.

The book begins by introducing the hermeneutic spiral, a cognitive processing model that categorizes responses to Vertigo's meaning, ranging from wide consensus to wild speculations of critical "outliers." Belton then provides an overview of the film, arguing that different interpreters literally see and attend to different things. The fourth chapter builds on this conclusion, arguing that because people see different things, one can force the production of new meanings by deliberately drawing attention to unusual comparisons. The latter chapters outline a number of such comparisons-including avant-garde films and the works of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch-to shed new light on the meanings of Vertigo.

About the Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

From award-winning research which changes the world to textbooks and study guides which educate and inspire, we publish across the humanities, social sciences and business for academics, students, professionals and librarians worldwide.With offices in London and New York, and sales teams across 50 countries, we have a global reach and as part of Macmillan Science and Education, are proud to uphold an unbroken tradition of over 170 years of academic publishing.

Book information

ISBN: 9783319551876
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan
Pub date:
DEWEY: 791.4372
DEWEY edition: 23
Language: English
Number of pages: 200
Weight: 356g
Height: 157mm
Width: 223mm
Spine width: 15mm