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 16
Page 12
... reflected it profusely in literary images of things. This reference to such an exemplary instance of time's ideological ambiva- lence in history does not contradict the impression of having to do with a metahistorical and almost logical ...
... reflected it profusely in literary images of things. This reference to such an exemplary instance of time's ideological ambiva- lence in history does not contradict the impression of having to do with a metahistorical and almost logical ...
Page 14
... reflected by the literary ambivalence of partially positive images — into which , as we know , a preliterary compromise flows between the antifunctional and the functional . 7 Freud's richly intuitive comparison , with its significantly ...
... reflected by the literary ambivalence of partially positive images — into which , as we know , a preliterary compromise flows between the antifunctional and the functional . 7 Freud's richly intuitive comparison , with its significantly ...
Page 15
... reflects it . But in whatever imaginary situation ambivalence is attributed to commodities — adults ' main fetish - one attributes its principal modern historical materialization to none other than the ambivalence of all ambivalences ...
... reflects it . But in whatever imaginary situation ambivalence is attributed to commodities — adults ' main fetish - one attributes its principal modern historical materialization to none other than the ambivalence of all ambivalences ...
Page 19
... reflected by literary images : the little sonnet's objects , anticommodities at the immediate level where they represent themselves , represent literature when , at the metaphoric level , they become commodities . Poetic discourse ...
... reflected by literary images : the little sonnet's objects , anticommodities at the immediate level where they represent themselves , represent literature when , at the metaphoric level , they become commodities . Poetic discourse ...
Page 51
... reflected in literary images ( II , 9 , 14 ) . And yet , who would admit that in the real world between 1812 and 1969 anticommodities prevailed over commodities , and that useless or old or unusual objects were more numerous , more ...
... reflected in literary images ( II , 9 , 14 ) . And yet , who would admit that in the real world between 1812 and 1969 anticommodities prevailed over commodities , and that useless or old or unusual objects were more numerous , more ...
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