Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction. The Epistemology of Optics: Seeing Subjects, Modern Minds -- Part I: Realism and the Visionary Eye: Balzac's Optics of Narration -- 1 Second Sight and the Authorial chambre noire: Les Chouans, Louis Lambert -- 2 "Tomber dans le phénomène": Afterimages in La Maison Nucingen and Le Bal de Sceaux -- 3 Alternative Optics: Séraphîta, La Recherche de l'absolu, and La Peau de chagrin -- 4 "Effets de lumière," or A "Second" Second Sight: La Fille aux yeux d'or -- Part II: Tenebrous Affairs: Romans policiers and the Detecting Eye -- 5 Cuvier, Helmholtz, and the Visual Logics of Deduction: Poe, Doyle, Gaboriau -- 6 Learning to See: Monsieur Lecoq and Empiricist Theories of Vision -- 7 Sealed Chambers and Open Eyes: Leroux's Mystère de la chambre jaune -- Part III: Villiers, Verne, and Claretie: Toward a Fin-de-Siècle "Optogrammatology" -- 8 Death and the Retina: Claire Lenoir, L'Accusateur, and Les Frères Kip -- 9 Optogram Fiction: Communication, Doubt, and the Fantastic -- 10 Tropical Piercings: Nationalism, Atavism, and the Eye of the Corpse -- 11 The Fin-de-Siècle Logic of the Afterimage: Hysteria, Hallucination, and Villiers's L'Eve future -- Epilogue. The Afterimage of Reference: Optics and the nouveau roman -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments.