Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“
Decay and Afterlife is a brilliant study that offers a veritable contribution to the library on ruins, ruination, debris, and decay. Through a series of deep readings on ruins-related texts from several European literary traditions, Prica makes a case that ruins manifest a textuality that productively troubles chronologies, histories, and meaning making. Ruins, we learn, are double-edged: they both invite and undo efforts to make sense of them.” -- Helmut Puff, University of Michigan
“
Decay and Afterlife is a highly original book that combines extraordinary historical scope and textual diversity with analytical perspicacity. Prica covers the cultural, literary, and philosophical history of ruins from the high middle ages to the twentieth century, and the advantages of this impressive longitudinal perspective are apparent. Prica’s analyses of the modern theorizations of ruins and time’s passing are characterized by an uncommon historical depth, and her readings of premodern encounters are informed by theoretical sophistication.” -- Christopher Wild, University of Chicago
Table of ContentsList of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
I Foundations
1 Among Ruins: Martin Heidegger and Sigmund Freud
2 Afterlife: Hans Blumenberg and Walter Benjamin
II The Propitious Moment
3 Petrarch and the View of Rome
4 Poliphilo and the Dream of Ruins
III Living On
5 Ferdinand Gregorovius, Hildebert of Lavardin, and the Rupture of Continuity
6 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Martin Opitz, and the Overcoming of Vanity
IV The Battleground of Time
7 Johann Jacob Breitinger, Andreas Gryphius, and the Reconsideration of Allegory
8 Thomas Burnet, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the Realignment of Discourses
V Futures and Ruins
9 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Georg Simmel, and the Provisionality of Forms
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
