Description |
1 online resource (xvii, 500 pages) |
Physical Medium |
polychrome |
Description |
text file |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 407-480) and indexes. |
Contents |
What this book is about -- First, confused examples -- Making decisions in order to proceed -- A tree neither genealogical nor botanical -- Twelve categories not to be too sharply distinguished -- Some twentieth-century novels -- Praising and disparaging the functional. |
Summary |
Translated 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 industrialisation, 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 in our culture, he concludes, is to remind us of what we have lost and what we are losing as we rush toward the future. |
Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
Subject |
Exoticism in literature.
|
|
Exoticism in literature. |
|
Picturesque, The, in literature.
|
|
Picturesque, The, in literature. |
|
Ruins in literature.
|
|
Ruins in literature. |
|
Literature, Modern -- History and criticism.
|
|
Literature, Modern. |
Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
|
|
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
|
Added Title |
Oggetti desueti nelle immagini della letteratura. English https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2005076558
|
Other Form: |
Print version: Orlando, Francesco, 1934- Oggetti desueti nelle immagini della letteratura. English. Obsolete objects in the literary imagination. New Haven : Yale University Press, ©2006 0300108087 9780300108088 (DLC) 2005027649 (OCoLC)62090723 |
ISBN |
9780300138214 (electronic book) |
|
0300138210 (electronic book) |
|
0300108087 |
|
9780300108088 |
|
1281728918 |
|
9781281728913 |
Standard No. |
9780300108088 |
|