Ruined by Design

Shaping Novels and Gardens in the Culture of Sensibility
1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-0-415-98950-3
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 298 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 588 g

Reihe: Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory

By examining the motif of ruination in a variety of late-eighteenth-century domains, this book portrays the moral aesthetic of the culture of sensibility in Europe, particularly its negotiation of the demands of tradition and pragmatism alongside utopian longings for authenticity, natural goodness, self-governance, mutual transparency, and instantaneous kinship. This book argues that the rhetoric of ruins lends a distinctive shape to the architecture and literature of the time and requires the novel to adjust notions of authorship and narrative to accommodate the prevailing aesthetic. Just as architects of eighteenth-century follies pretend to have discovered "authentic" ruins, novelists within the culture of sensibility also build purposely fragmented texts and disguise their authorship, invoking highly artificial means of simulating nature. The cultural pursuit of human ruin, however, leads to hypocritical and sadistic extremes that put an end to the characteristic ambivalence of sensibility and its unusual structures.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brodey, Inger Sigrun

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Sensibility and its Discontents

Chapter One: Redeeming Ruin

Chapter Two: The Anatomy of Follies

Chapter Three: Reading Ruin

Chapter Four: Constructing Human Ruin

Afterword: The Luxuries of Distress

Notes

Index

Über Autor(innen)

An award-winning teacher and essayist, Dr. Brodey is Assistant Professor in English and Comparative Literature and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has published extensively on Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Preromanticism, and the Culture of Sensibility.