Description
Book SynopsisThe book argues that the Renaissance was the Ruin-naissance, the birth of the ruin as category of discourse that inspired voluminous poetic production. By examining Petrarch, Du Bellay, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Spenser, and Shakespeare, Hui explains how writers used the ruin to think about their relationship to classical antiquity.
Trade Review"Written with a lucid, elegant sensibility and profound erudition, this study interprets anew the shifts in meaning and value of ruins from classical Latin, to the Romance languages, to English lyrics. At the heart of his analysis Hui uncovers and probes the central problems raised by thinkers on the archeology of ruins: the inner relation between literature and ruins, the ethics of finitude they embody, their future, and the place of ruins at the new beginnings of history. My mind expands as I read it, and I can easily predict others will respond the same way." -- -Giuseppe Mazzotta Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian, Yale University
Table of ContentsList of Figures and Color Plates Introduction: A Japanese Friend Part I 1. The Rebirth of Poetics 2. The Rebirth of Ruins Part II 3. Petrarch's Vestigia and the Presence of Absence 4. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Erotics of Fragments 5. Du Bellay's Cendre and the Formless Signifier 6. Spenser's Moniments and the Allegory of Ruins Epilogue: Fallen Castles and Summer Grass Acknowledgments Notes Index
