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 14
Page 2
... specific attention . I am referring , of course , to the theme of ruins , Roman and otherwise : a theme that is not at all limited by the verbal form of the list , and that , moreover , is common to the visual arts an area that I would ...
... specific attention . I am referring , of course , to the theme of ruins , Roman and otherwise : a theme that is not at all limited by the verbal form of the list , and that , moreover , is common to the visual arts an area that I would ...
Page 5
... specific through various transgressions that contradict various imperatives. We can most readily suppose that the transgressions that literature is most inclined to represent will contradict a moral or practical imperative—one that ...
... specific through various transgressions that contradict various imperatives. We can most readily suppose that the transgressions that literature is most inclined to represent will contradict a moral or practical imperative—one that ...
Page 7
... specific cases discussed in the textual quotations and analyses that follow . Perhaps I should also confirm the reader's expectation that a study of a presumable return of the antifunctional repressed in literature will deal ...
... specific cases discussed in the textual quotations and analyses that follow . Perhaps I should also confirm the reader's expectation that a study of a presumable return of the antifunctional repressed in literature will deal ...
Page 10
... specific imaginary contents of the texts; second, the denial of the literary functionality of the texts, understood here as their formal qual- ity. More simply put, in the first case we deny functionality if we say that a text discusses ...
... specific imaginary contents of the texts; second, the denial of the literary functionality of the texts, understood here as their formal qual- ity. More simply put, in the first case we deny functionality if we say that a text discusses ...
Page 23
... specific literary - historical relationship . The difference between poetry and prose is only one of the many that distance the previous excerpt from the one that I draw from a novel by Joseph Roth ( 1894-1939 ) , Flight without End : A ...
... specific literary - historical relationship . The difference between poetry and prose is only one of the many that distance the previous excerpt from the one that I draw from a novel by Joseph Roth ( 1894-1939 ) , Flight without End : 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 |
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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