Main entry:

McIsaac, Peter.

Title & Author:

Museums of the mind : German modernity and the dynamics of collecting / Peter M. McIsaac.

Publication:

University Park : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©2007.

Description:

xiii, 322 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-313) and index.
The museum function, inventoried consciousness, and German-speaking literature -- Inventoried consciousness today : Durs Grünbein and W.G. Sebald -- Ottilie under glass : collecting as disciplinary regime in Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften -- The museum of Bildung : collecting in Stifter's Nachsommer -- Archaeology, exhibition, and tourism : Raabe's "Keltische Knochen" -- Flöneur optical, collector tactile : Rilke's Neue Gedichte as imaginary museum landscape -- "Quiet violence" : the Army Museum in Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina -- (re)collecting the twentieth century : Siegfried Lenz's Heimatmuseum.

Summary:

"Museums of the Mind is the first book to explore the evolving relationship of collecting and the German literary imagination since the invention of the public museum. This study shows that in addition to redefining categories of art, history, and identity in modernity, the museum transforms the relationship between material objects and imaginative narratives. Using new categories, Peter McIsaac constructs a critical genealogy using key texts by Johann Goethe, Adalbert Stifter, Wilhelm Raabe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ingeborg Bachmann, Siegfried Lenz, W.G. Sebald, and Durs Grunbein and the material record of Germanophone museums. McIsaac rethinks how fundamental cultural "truths" define what it means to belong to acculturated communities, showing that the activation of meaning in museums depends foremost on what people bring, in their minds, to those real and imagined environments, resulting in what McIsaac calls museums of the mind. This notion elucidates the vital shifts wrought by museum culture over the past two centuries and illuminates how museums, literature, and digital media shape thought and behavior today."--Jacket.

Resources:
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents
Table of contents
Book review (H-Net)
Table of contents only

ISBN:

9780271029917 (cloth ; alk. paper)
0271029919 (cloth ; alk. paper)
9780271058702
0271058706

Subject:

Heimatmuseum der Gemeinde Gründau
BMBF-Statusseminar
Museums Social aspects Germany.
Museums in literature.
Musées Aspect social Allemagne.
Musées dans la littérature.
20.12 art museums.
Museums Social aspects.
Kunst
Literatur
Museum
Raritätenkammer
Soziale Funktion
Museums.
Collection development.
Modernism (culture)
Literature.
Art review.
Germany.
Deutschland
Deutsch.
Geschichte 1850-2000

Holdings:

Location: Library main 256036
Call No.: BIB 186321
Status: Available