Description
Book SynopsisThe Etruscans, a revenant and unusual people, had all but disappeared by the start of the Christian era. Sam Solecki chronicles their unexpected return to the intellectual and cultural history of the west, beginning with eighteenth-century scholars, collectors, and archaeologists, to provide a fascinating meditation on cultural transmission between ancient and modern civilizations.
Trade Review“[The Etruscans in the Modern Imagination] provides a rare opportunity to hear the views of a specialist from another discipline, that of film studies, and to enjoy the author’s extensive knowledge of 19th- and 20th century art and literature, the ‘modern imagination’ referred to in the title. Solecki’s detailed analysis in each chapter is laser-focused on the artist or writer’s engagement with the Etruscan world, and there are lengthy and enjoyable quotations presented to illustrate this. The annotated catalogue of ‘Etruscan sightings’ with which the book ends is an incredibly valuable resource for those interested in Etruscan reception studies.” Minerva Magazine
"A virtuosic investigation into the long disappearance and gradual rediscovery of a civilization given up for lost. The elusive strangeness of the Etruscans, in Solecki’s telling, relative to the all too familiar accounts of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, has given them a special power to fascinate and stimulate the inquisitive modern mind.” Literary Review of Canada
