Neo-baroque : a sign of the times / Omar Calabrese ; translated by Charles Lambert ; with a foreword by Umberto Eco.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Calabrese, Omar, author.

Contributor:

Lambert, Charles, translator.

Eco, Umberto, writer of foreword.

Series:

Princeton legacy library.

Princeton Legacy Library

Standardized Title:

Età neobarocca. English

Language:

English

Italian

Subjects (All):

Arts, Modern--20th century--Themes, motives.

Arts, Modern.

Arts, Modern--20th century--Philosophy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (242 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2017.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A leading young Italian semiologist scrutinizes today's cultural phenomena and finds the prevailing taste to be "neo-baroque"--characterized by an appetite for virtuosity, frantic rhythms, instability, poly-dimensionality, and change. Omar Calabrese locates a "sign of the times" in an amazing variety of literary, philosophical, artistic, musical, and architectural forms, from the Venice Biennale through the "new science" to television series, video games, and "zapping" with the remote control device from channel to channel! Calabrese admits that he begins the book with a refusal to distinguish between "Donald Duck and Dante." Avoiding hierarchies or ghettos among works, he takes his readers on a fast-paced expedition through contemporary culture that closes with an elegant essay on evaluation and classical form. According to Calabrese, the enormous quantity of narrative now being produced has led to a new situation: everything has already been said, and everything has already been written. The only way of avoiding saturation has been to turn to a poetics of repetition. The author shows that pleasure in texts is now produced by tiny variations, and a certain kind of citation from other works has taken on a central importance that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. In describing this development, and others shared by both avant-garde and mass media, he makes us aware of the rapid shrinkage in the once ample space between "highbrow" and "lowbrow."Originally published in 1992.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Chapter 1. Taste and Method

Chapter 2. Rhythm and Repetition

Chapter 3. Limit and Excess

Chapter 4. Detail and Fragment

Chapter 5. Instability and Metamorphosis

Chapter 6. Disorder and Chaos

Chapter 7. The Knot and the Labyrinth

Chapter 8. Complexity and Dissipation

Chapter 9. The Approximate and the Inexpressible

Chapter 10. Distortion and Perversion

Chapter 11. Some Like It Classical

Notes

Index of Names

Notes:

Translation of: L'età neobarocca.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691629582

0691629587

9780691607139

0691607133

OCLC:

1016677725