Main entry:

Stewart, Susan, 1952- author.

Title & Author:

The ruins lesson : meaning and material in western culture / Susan Stewart.

Publication:

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2020.
©2020

Description:

xiv, 378 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages [277]-353) and index.
Valuing ruin -- Matter : this ruined earth -- Marks : inscriptions and spolia -- Mater : nymphs, virgins, and whores-on the ruin of women -- Matrix : humanism and the rise of the ruins print -- Model : the architectural imaginary -- Mirrors : the voyages and fantasies of the ruins craze -- The unfinished : on the nonfinality of certain works of art -- Resisting ruin : the decay of monuments and the promises of language.
Binding: Includes original dust-jacket.

Summary:

"In 'The Ruins Lesson,' the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet-critic Susan Stewart explores the West's fascination with ruins in literature, visual art, and architecture, covering a vast chronological and geographical range from the ancient Egyptians to T. S. Eliot. In the multiplication of images of ruins, artists, and writers she surveys, Stewart shows how these thinkers struggled to recover lessons out of the fragility or our cultural remains. She tries to understand the appeal in the West of ruins and ruination, particularly Roman ruins, in the work and thought of Goethe, Piranesi, Blake, and Wordsworth, whom she returns to throughout the book. Her sweeping, deeply felt study encompasses the founding legends of broken covenants and original sin; Christian transformations of the classical past; the myths and rituals of human fertility; images of ruins in Renaissance allegory, eighteenth-century melancholy, and nineteenth-century cataloguing; and new gardens that eventually emerged from ancient sites of disaster"-- Provided by publisher.

ISBN:

9780226632612 (hardcover)
022663261X (hardcover)
9780226792200 (paperback)
022679220X (paperback)
(electronic book)
9780226632759

Subject:

Ruins in literature.
Ruins in art.
Antiquities in literature.
Antiquities in art.
Ruines dans la littérature.
Ruines dans l'art.
Antiquités dans la littérature.
Antiquités dans l'art.
Künste
Kultur
Ruine

Holdings:

Location: Library main 309369
Call No.: BIB 254633
Status: External loan