| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 298 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Among ruins: Martin Heidegger and Sigmund Freud -- After life: Hans Blumenberg and Walter Benjamin -- Petrarch and the view of Rome -- Poliphilo and the dream of ruins -- Ferdinand Gregorovius, Hildebert of Lavardin, and the rupture of continuity -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Martin Opitz, and the overcoming of vanity -- Johann Jacob Breitinger, Andreas Gryphius, and the reconsideration of allegory -- Thomas Burnet, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the realignment of discourses -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Georg Simmel, and the provisionality of forms -- Epilogue |
| Summary |
"Western ruins have long been understood as objects riddled with temporal contradictions, whether they appear in Baroque poetry and drama, Romanticism's nostalgic view of history, eighteenth-century paintings of classical subjects, or even recent photographic histories of the ruins of post-industrial Detroit. Decay and Afterlife pivots away from our immediate, visual fascination with ruins, and instead focuses on the textuality of ruins in works about disintegration and survival. Combining an array of literary, philosophical, and historiographical works both canonical and neglected, and encompassing Latin, Italian, French, German, and English sources, Aleksandra Prica addresses ruins as textual forms, examining them in their extraordinary geographical and temporal breadth, highlighting their variability and reflexivity, and uncovering new lines of aesthetic and intellectual affinity. Through theoretically rich close readings, she traverses the longue durée of 800 years of intellectual and literary history, from Seneca and Petrarch to Hegel, Goethe, and Georg Simmel. She tracks Europe's ruins discourses as they metamorphose over time, identifying unremarked resemblances and resonances, ignored contrasts and tensions, as well as the shared apprehensions and ideas these thinkers bring to light. Throughout, she asks, "What persists in keeping the ruins of a once grand past alive?""-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based upon print version of record |
| Subject |
Antiquities in literature.
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European literature -- History and criticism
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Ruins in literature.
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LITERARY CRITICISM / General.
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Antiquities in literature
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European literature
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Ruins in literature
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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Literary criticism
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Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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Literary criticism.
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Critiques littéraires.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
2021019307 |
| ISBN |
022681145X |
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9780226811451 |
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