Ruins in the Literary and Cultural Imagination

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-030-26904-3
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 306 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 533 g

This book focuses on literal and metaphorical ruins, as they are appropriated and imagined in different forms of writing. Examining British and American literature and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the book begins in the era of industrial modernity with studies of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James and Daphne Du Maurier. It then moves on to the significance of ruins in the twentieth century, against the backdrop of conflict, waste and destruction, analyzing authors such as Beckett and Pinter, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and Leonard Cohen. The collection concludes with current debates on ruins, through discussions of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht, as well as reflections on the refugee crisis that take the ruin beyond the text, offering new perspectives on its diverse legacies and conceptual resources.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mitsi, Efterpi

Aretoulakis, Emmanouil

Despotopoulou, Anna

Dimakopoulou, Stamatina

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1. Introduction, Efterpi Mitsi, Anna Despotopoulou, Stamatina Dimakopoulou, Emmanouil Aretoulakis.- Chapter 2. Amongst the Ruins of a European Gothic Phantasmagoria in Athens, Maria Vara.- Chapter 3. Dickens’s Animate Ruins, Michael Hollington.- Chapter 4. The Indifference of Fragments: Untimely Ruin in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Claire Potter.- Chapter 5. Rising from Ruins: Isabel Archer at the Roman Campagna, Chryssa Marinou.- Chapter 6. Untimely Returns: Shoring Fragments against Ruins in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Sheila Teahan.- Chapter 7. “There must be no ruins”: Ruinophobia and Urban Morphology in Turn-of-the-Century New York, Theodora Tsimpouki.- Chapter 8. “Ruins True Refuge”: Beckett and Pinter, David Tucker.- Chapter 9. Out of the Ruins of Dresden: Destructive Plasticity in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Giorgos Giannakopoulos.- Chapter 10. Melancholia and the Bomb: Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton and the Fragmented Atomic Psyche, Adam Beardsworth.- Chapter 11. The Fractured World of Leonard Cohen, Jeffrey L. Spear.- Chapter 12. Springtime for Defaults: The Producers as the Ruin of History and the Triumph of Hystery, Christina Dokou.- Chapter 13. In the Absence of Ruins: The “Non-Sites of Memory” in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Daniel Mendelsohn’s Lost: The Search for Six of Six Million, Angeliki Tseti.- Chapter 14. Destruction Preservation, or the Edifying Ruin in Benjamin and Brecht, Vassiliki Kolocotroni.- Chapter 15. Thinking Like a Ruin, Carl Lavery and Simon Murray.- Chapter 16. Contemporary Ruins, Fragments of the Lives of Others, Critical Intimacies in and out of Comfort Zones, Apostolos Lampropoulos.- Chapter 17: Afterword: The Consolations of Ruins: From the Acropolis to Epidaurus, Jyotsna Singh.

Über Autor(innen)

Efterpi Mitsi is Professor in English Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Anna Despotopoulou is Professor in English Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Stamatina Dimakopoulou is Assistant Professor in American Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.

Emmanouil Aretoulakis is tenured Associate Lecturer in English Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.