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
Results 1-5 of 42
Page 24
... antiquity of their deactivated religious purposes . The fact that the conductor's parlor is not characterized by bad taste or kitsch , that in other words the objects are assumed to be well recontextualized , must not distract us from ...
... antiquity of their deactivated religious purposes . The fact that the conductor's parlor is not characterized by bad taste or kitsch , that in other words the objects are assumed to be well recontextualized , must not distract us from ...
Page 45
... antiquity is what makes it sinister . Undefined , but not undefin- able : the signs that denote this antiquity are highly suggestive in terms of both chronology and history : they refer us , approximately , to the fifteenth and ...
... antiquity is what makes it sinister . Undefined , but not undefin- able : the signs that denote this antiquity are highly suggestive in terms of both chronology and history : they refer us , approximately , to the fifteenth and ...
Page 54
... antiquity to the very end of the Renaissance, indeed to the eighteenth century—up to a Romanticism that is mainly excluded, despite a few quotations toward the end. It is interesting that the lower, final limit of the classical ...
... antiquity to the very end of the Renaissance, indeed to the eighteenth century—up to a Romanticism that is mainly excluded, despite a few quotations toward the end. It is interesting that the lower, final limit of the classical ...
Page 73
... antiquity that has spread beneath these funereal arches , that we are so to speak breathing the dust of bygone times . ” 7 One finds an even more intense sensorial evocation - less visual than auditory , this time- at the stupendous end ...
... antiquity that has spread beneath these funereal arches , that we are so to speak breathing the dust of bygone times . ” 7 One finds an even more intense sensorial evocation - less visual than auditory , this time- at the stupendous end ...
Page 76
... antiquity we learned , among other things , the lesson that images can have sufficient literary substance with a minimum of words . In a text from a century and a half later , we find a greater literary substance in images with a ...
... antiquity we learned , among other things , the lesson that images can have sufficient literary substance with a minimum of words . In a text from a century and a half later , we find a greater literary substance in images with a ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
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