Haunted Museum Longing, Travel, and the Art - Romance Tradition / Jonah Siegel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Siegel, Jonah, 1963-

Series:

Princeton paperbacks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Travel in literature.

Romanticism.

Literature, Modern.

Literature.

Artists in literature.

Art in literature.

Literature, Modern--19th century--History and criticism.

Italy.

Italy--In literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (306 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2005.

Summary:

For centuries, southern Europe, and Italy in particular, has offered writers far more than an evocative setting for important works of literature. The voyage south has been an integral part of the imagination of inspiration. Haunted Museum is a groundbreaking, in-depth look at fantasies of Italy from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, focusing on a literary tradition Jonah Siegel terms the "art romance"--the fantastic voyage south understood as the register of an ambivalent desire for art and a heightened experience of reality. Siegel argues that Italy's allure derives not only from its celebrated promise of unique natural beauty and prized antiquities, but from the opportunity it offers writers to place themselves in relation to a web of prior accounts of travel to the native land of genius. Beginning with Goethe as the founding figure of the tradition, Haunted Museum moves from a rich reframing of literature from the first half of the nineteenth century--including new readings of works by Byron, de Staël, Barrett Browning, and others--to an ambitious examination of Henry James's well-known engagement with Europe, newly understood as a response to this important literary legacy. Readings of works by Freud, Forster, Mann, and Proust demonstrate the longevity of the tradition of looking to Italy for the representation of desires as impossible to satisfy as they are to deny.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface: The Gesture Back

INTRODUCTION A Haunted Form

PART ONE The Art Romance

CHAPTER 1 The Song of Mignon

CHAPTER 2 The Art-Romance Tradition

PART TWO James in the Art Romance

CHAPTER 3 Henry James: Impossible Artists and the Pleasures of Patronage

CHAPTER 4 The Museum in the Romance: James with Hawthorne

CHAPTER 5 Speed, Desire, and the Museum: The Golden Bowl as Art Romance

PART THREE Learned Longing: Modernism and the End of the Art Romance

CHAPTER 6 Freud on the Road to Rome

CHAPTER 7 Speed, Romance, Desire: Forster, Proust, and Mann in Italy

AFTERWORD James, Freud, and the End of Romance

Notes

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691229287

0691229287

OCLC:

1241451960