Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination: Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden Treasures

Francesco Orlando

Published by Yale University Press 2008

Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination

Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden Treasures

Francesco Orlando

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300138214

Overview
Contents

About this book

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 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.

Author / Editor information

Francesco Orlando is professor of theory of literature at the University of Pisa and is widely regarded as one of Europe’s foremost literary critics. Gabriel Pihas is assistant professor, European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin. Daniel Seidel is a freelance translator living in Brooklyn, NY. Alessandra Grego is adjunct professor of English literature, John Cabot University of Rome.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Foreword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
Note on the Translation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xvii
I What This Book Is About Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
II First, Confused Examples Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
III Making Decisions in Order to Proceed Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
IV A Tree Neither Genealogical Nor Botanical Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
V Twelve Categories Not to Be Too Sharply Distinguished Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
VI Some Twentieth-Century Novels Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	343
VII Praising and Disparaging the Functional Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	375
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	407
Index of Subjects Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	481
Index of Names and Texts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	487

Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press
Pages
- Main content: 528

eBook

Published: October 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780300138214