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 93
Page ix
... past . Now Professor of French Literature at the University of Pisa , Francesco Or- lando is one of the world's leading literary theorists and a scholar - critic whose grasp of literary history recalls such masters as Erich Auerbach ix ...
... past . Now Professor of French Literature at the University of Pisa , Francesco Or- lando is one of the world's leading literary theorists and a scholar - critic whose grasp of literary history recalls such masters as Erich Auerbach ix ...
Page xi
... past to a nonfunctional oblivion , whether to a museum or , more usually , to the trash heap . But these objects return , depicted in literature whose own cultural function is to remind us of what we have lost and are constantly losing ...
... past to a nonfunctional oblivion , whether to a museum or , more usually , to the trash heap . But these objects return , depicted in literature whose own cultural function is to remind us of what we have lost and are constantly losing ...
Page 5
... past, and that not even the relative fortuity of the selected texts can avoid giving pride of place, in the long run, to these so-called masterpieces. Nor am I forgetting the conditioning proper to the series of texts themselves, which ...
... past, and that not even the relative fortuity of the selected texts can avoid giving pride of place, in the long run, to these so-called masterpieces. Nor am I forgetting the conditioning proper to the series of texts themselves, which ...
Page 8
... past, and as occasions for meditation, monumental ruins seem to be anything but deprived of function. They are visited and venerated and constitute items of cultural use. Neverthe- less, they are the remnants, fragmentary in varying ...
... past, and as occasions for meditation, monumental ruins seem to be anything but deprived of function. They are visited and venerated and constitute items of cultural use. Neverthe- less, they are the remnants, fragmentary in varying ...
Page 10
... past lingers with the threat of a visible return; a city swallowed up by the desert, in which the menace that creeps into human dwellings with every cobweb on the walls or nettle between the flagstones is fulfilled; a banal sou- venir ...
... past lingers with the threat of a visible return; a city swallowed up by the desert, in which the menace that creeps into human dwellings with every cobweb on the walls or nettle between the flagstones is fulfilled; a banal sou- venir ...
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