Description
Book SynopsisThe study of Greece as an icon of culture appears to be as old as Greece itself, as if its cultural significance had attained full maturity at birth. In
Silent Urns, the author reveals how Greece attained such significance as the result of the attempt to reconcile individuality, freedom, history, and modernity in 18th-century aesthetics.
Trade Review"This is a truly remarkable volume, remarkable for its originality, for the driving coherence of its complex subject matter, for its bringing together a number of fields of study in a manner that forces us into new realizations about their interrelationships. This book is-there is no way to overemphasize this-an exceedingly important meditation not only on Romanticism, eighteenth-century studies, and the ways we interpret art, history, and Hellenism; it is beyond all that a superb and daring commentary on cultural studies and historicism in their relationship to theories of criticism and language." -Carol Jacobs,State University of New York, Buffalo
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. Greece and the invention of culture: Winckelmann; 2. The silence of Greece: Keats; 3. The choice of tragedy: from Keats to Schelling; 4. The history of freedom: from Aeschylus to Shelley; 5. The time of judgment: Shelley's Prometheus Unbound; 6. The recall of thought: Holderlin; Notes; Index.
