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 85
Page x
... cultural orthodoxy , and in this sense Plato was right to banish poetry from his utopian and inhuman republic . Because , moreover , the repres- sions of the dominant culture change over time , it is possible to historicize this model ...
... cultural orthodoxy , and in this sense Plato was right to banish poetry from his utopian and inhuman republic . Because , moreover , the repres- sions of the dominant culture change over time , it is possible to historicize this model ...
Page xi
... culture , and aligned it with the superstition of Christianity they sought to dispel . Nonetheless , Or- lando , true to his model of literature as “ a semiotic compromise - formation which allows one to say yes or no to anything ...
... culture , and aligned it with the superstition of Christianity they sought to dispel . Nonetheless , Or- lando , true to his model of literature as “ a semiotic compromise - formation which allows one to say yes or no to anything ...
Page xii
... culture is on the decline in the United States, it is a salutary reminder that the history of literature looks different when viewed from Europe. The grand if implicit argument of the book is that literature itself has come to embody as ...
... culture is on the decline in the United States, it is a salutary reminder that the history of literature looks different when viewed from Europe. The grand if implicit argument of the book is that literature itself has come to embody as ...
Page 3
... culture and nature through- out the process of transformation of this world . The very relationship between human beings and time , which leaves its traces on things , was also at stake , inasmuch as it projected onto things the limits ...
... culture and nature through- out the process of transformation of this world . The very relationship between human beings and time , which leaves its traces on things , was also at stake , inasmuch as it projected onto things the limits ...
Page 5
... cultural reality from which it emanates, and as a historic archive it is unequaled by the sum of all the other, more fortuitous and less organic documents that can bear witness to past rebellions, infractions, and frustrations. But what ...
... cultural reality from which it emanates, and as a historic archive it is unequaled by the sum of all the other, more fortuitous and less organic documents that can bear witness to past rebellions, infractions, and frustrations. But what ...
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