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 25
Page 8
... codified by the collective imagination before or after having been codified by literature. The series will perhaps seem extremely heterogeneous: monumental ruins, deconsecrated churches, dried flowers, nec- romantic relics, buried ...
... codified by the collective imagination before or after having been codified by literature. The series will perhaps seem extremely heterogeneous: monumental ruins, deconsecrated churches, dried flowers, nec- romantic relics, buried ...
Page 54
... codified thematic constants that are not limited to document- able historic relationships between one text and another, as is required by concepts such as source, favor, taste, fashion, model, and locus communis or topos. In fact, in ...
... codified thematic constants that are not limited to document- able historic relationships between one text and another, as is required by concepts such as source, favor, taste, fashion, model, and locus communis or topos. In fact, in ...
Page 57
... From a certain moment onward , the tradition in question includes the most ancient constants in our whole ; they , in turn , may be presumed to be codified compromise - formations , offered Making Decisions in Order to Proceed III.5 57.
... From a certain moment onward , the tradition in question includes the most ancient constants in our whole ; they , in turn , may be presumed to be codified compromise - formations , offered Making Decisions in Order to Proceed III.5 57.
Page 58
... codified compromise - formations , offered again and again for millennia . One may sometimes detect in them the traces of equally ancient preliterary compromises . We may now verify what was predictable as early as the end of the first ...
... codified compromise - formations , offered again and again for millennia . One may sometimes detect in them the traces of equally ancient preliterary compromises . We may now verify what was predictable as early as the end of the first ...
Page 61
... codified compromise - formations only on a case - by - case basis- that is , through single texts , or through text catego- rized according to further criteria . And only the distinction - which was intro- duced in the first chapter ...
... codified compromise - formations only on a case - by - case basis- that is , through single texts , or through text catego- rized according to further criteria . And only the distinction - which was intro- duced in the first chapter ...
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