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Author Orlando, Francesco, 1934-2010.

Title Obsolete objects in the literary imagination : ruins, relics, rarities, rubbish, uninhabited places, and hidden treasures / Francesco Orlando ; translated from the Italian by Gabriel Pihas and Daniel Seidel, with the collaboration of Alessandra Grego ; foreword by David Quint.

Publication Info. New Haven : Yale University Press, [2006]
©2006

Item Status

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