Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination: Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden TreasuresTranslated here into English for the first time is a monumental work of literary history and criticism comparable in scope and achievement to Eric Auerbach’s Mimesis. Italian critic Francesco Orlando explores Western literature’s obsession with outmoded and nonfunctional objects (ruins, obsolete machinery, broken things, trash, etc.). Combining the insights of psychoanalysis and literary-political history, Orlando traces this obsession to a turning point in history, at the end of eighteenth-century industrialization, when the functional becomes the dominant value of Western culture. Roaming through every genre and much of the history of Western literature, the author identifies distinct categories into which obsolete images can be classified and provides myriad examples. The function of literature, he concludes, is to remind us of what we have lost and what we are losing as we rush toward the future. |
From inside the book
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Page xii
... field of comparative literature, its examples and case studies, analyzed with rare critical intelligence and subtlety, range across nearly every European language and literary tradition. An incidental pleasure and lesson for English ...
... field of comparative literature, its examples and case studies, analyzed with rare critical intelligence and subtlety, range across nearly every European language and literary tradition. An incidental pleasure and lesson for English ...
Page xvi
... field; and I would not have been able to appreciate the latter's suggestion, in an even more ancient field, without the kindness of Giovanni Mazzini. In the very last revision, and in the correction of the proofs, Francesco Ghelli made ...
... field; and I would not have been able to appreciate the latter's suggestion, in an even more ancient field, without the kindness of Giovanni Mazzini. In the very last revision, and in the correction of the proofs, Francesco Ghelli made ...
Page 5
... field of fiction. If this is the case, literature possesses the permanent value of a photographic negative of the positive cultural reality from which it emanates, and as a historic archive it is unequaled by the sum of all the other ...
... field of fiction. If this is the case, literature possesses the permanent value of a photographic negative of the positive cultural reality from which it emanates, and as a historic archive it is unequaled by the sum of all the other ...
Page 10
... field. I shall take equally conventional examples, one by one, thereby composing an equally heterogeneous series and continuing to imagine them outside of actual literary texts. I shall now say just a few words about each of them, since ...
... field. I shall take equally conventional examples, one by one, thereby composing an equally heterogeneous series and continuing to imagine them outside of actual literary texts. I shall now say just a few words about each of them, since ...
Page 11
... field of literature . And if , on the contrary , lingering on such images in literature is quite capable of providing pleasure — as anyone who instinc- tively remembers appropriate texts will concede — this is simply a particular aspect ...
... field of literature . And if , on the contrary , lingering on such images in literature is quite capable of providing pleasure — as anyone who instinc- tively remembers appropriate texts will concede — this is simply a particular aspect ...
Contents
1 | |
17 | |
47 | |
67 | |
Twelve Categories Not to Be Too Sharply Distinguished | 206 |
Some TwentiethCentury Novels | 343 |
Praising and Disparaging the Functional | 375 |
Notes | 407 |
Index of Subjects | 481 |
Index of Names and Texts | 487 |
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Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination: Ruins, Relics, Rarities ... Francesco Orlando No preview available - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
adjectives already ambivalence ancien régime ancient antifunctional antiquity appears Balzac Baroque become Bibliothèque castle catachresis century chap chapter character Chateaubriand Comédie humaine contamination culture dead death desolate-disconnected Everyman's Library examples fact functional furniture genre Gothic novel historical turning point human hyperbole Ibid imagery images Jerusalem Delivered kitsch La Comédie humaine la Pléiade Les Rougon-Macquart less lines literary literature magic memory metaphor metonymy Milan modern Mondadori narrative narrator nature negative category night nonfunctional corporality novel objects Oblomov Oeuvres complètes opposition Orlando outdoing Oxford University Press palace Paris passage past Pléiade poem poetic precious-potential present pretentious-fictitious protagonist quoted refer relationship remains reminiscent-affective repressed ruins seems semantic tree semipositive category sense sinister-terrifying solemn-admonitory space sterile-noxious story supernatural symbolic tercet thematic constants theme things threadbare-grotesque tion tradition trans treasure Turin venerable-regressive walls words worn-realistic