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 74
... Baroque modernism was happier with a commonplace about a victory for art than with one about a victory for time ) . The disparity in level of dignity between decayed Roman monuments and the hole in the elbow of a doublet is too great ...
... Baroque modernism was happier with a commonplace about a victory for art than with one about a victory for time ) . The disparity in level of dignity between decayed Roman monuments and the hole in the elbow of a doublet is too great ...
Page 92
... Baroque period . I have said that the fading of color from a piece of material would in turn become a topos of nineteenth - century description ( IV , 5 ) —a good occasion for a com- parison of the definition of the threadbare ...
... Baroque period . I have said that the fading of color from a piece of material would in turn become a topos of nineteenth - century description ( IV , 5 ) —a good occasion for a com- parison of the definition of the threadbare ...
Page 93
... Baroque amplification , on account of which the poet's inspection of the room or attic swells to enormous length before the whore arrives on the scene . This room , too , has at least one other use — as a storage room , which is the ...
... Baroque amplification , on account of which the poet's inspection of the room or attic swells to enormous length before the whore arrives on the scene . This room , too , has at least one other use — as a storage room , which is the ...
Page 94
... Baroque list surpasses both Martial's ancient one and all the modern ones in our second chapter . In twenty lines it displays more than thirty elements , singular or plural , and if they are not all on the same level it is not because ...
... Baroque list surpasses both Martial's ancient one and all the modern ones in our second chapter . In twenty lines it displays more than thirty elements , singular or plural , and if they are not all on the same level it is not because ...
Page 95
... Baroque in the variant known at the time as conceptismo, the style of witty, even outlandish conceits. The last of these three features is more than ever a good reason for banishing every notion of realism as serious, as opposed to ...
... Baroque in the variant known at the time as conceptismo, the style of witty, even outlandish conceits. The last of these three features is more than ever a good reason for banishing every notion of realism as serious, as opposed to ...
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