Francesco Orlando
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300108088
- eISBN:
- 9780300138214
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300108088.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
Translated here into English is a work of literary history and criticism comparable in scope and achievement to Eric Auerbach's Mimesis. The author explores Western literature's obsession with ...
More
Translated here into English is a work of literary history and criticism comparable in scope and achievement to Eric Auerbach's Mimesis. The author 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, he traces this obsession to a turning point in history, at the end of eighteenth-century industrialization, when the functional became 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.Less
Translated here into English is a work of literary history and criticism comparable in scope and achievement to Eric Auerbach's Mimesis. The author 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, he traces this obsession to a turning point in history, at the end of eighteenth-century industrialization, when the functional became 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.
Francesco Orlando
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300108088
- eISBN:
- 9780300138214
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300108088.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter summarizes the scope of the content written and explored upon by this book. It notes the author's compilation of a list of things in its material sense—physical and concrete things ...
More
This chapter summarizes the scope of the content written and explored upon by this book. It notes the author's compilation of a list of things in its material sense—physical and concrete things presented on the imaginary plane of reality of several literary texts. The chapter then explains how the history of this list, and how these concepts took shape and form in the author's mind in order to be compiled and expounded upon in the writing of this book. A few examples of these objects would be ruins, obsolete machinery, broken things, trash, etc. What do these frequently appearing objects represent through their existence over things that are actually useful, new, or normal? The chapter then explores the relationship between human beings and time through the process of literary testimony—a term which refers to literature's ability to give testimony to the past in a whole different level of quality that cannot be controlled.Less
This chapter summarizes the scope of the content written and explored upon by this book. It notes the author's compilation of a list of things in its material sense—physical and concrete things presented on the imaginary plane of reality of several literary texts. The chapter then explains how the history of this list, and how these concepts took shape and form in the author's mind in order to be compiled and expounded upon in the writing of this book. A few examples of these objects would be ruins, obsolete machinery, broken things, trash, etc. What do these frequently appearing objects represent through their existence over things that are actually useful, new, or normal? The chapter then explores the relationship between human beings and time through the process of literary testimony—a term which refers to literature's ability to give testimony to the past in a whole different level of quality that cannot be controlled.
