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Exemplary of an 18th-century literary genre that combined fictional narrative with didactic observations on art and architecture, The Little House tells the tale of a seduction in a maison de plaisance outside of Paris. The house itself - its architecture, gardens, artwork, and furnishings - is the central element of a story in which an impressionable woman mistakes good taste for good intentions, with unforseen results. The Little House, long an underground classic among architectural historians and theorists, has never before been published in English. Anthony Vidler's insightful preface and Rodolphe el-Khoury's informative introduction, notes, and careful translation make the novella more accessible to the contemporary reader.
As he demonstrates that narratives of seduction function as a master plot for French literature in the eighteenth century, Paul Young argues that the prevalence of this trope was a reaction to a dominant cultural discourse that coded the novel and the new practice of solitary reading as dangerous, seductive practices. Situating his study in the context of paintings, educational manuals, and criticism that caution against the act of reading, Young considers both canonical and lesser-known works by authors that include Rousseau, Sade, Bastide, Laclos, Crébillon fils, and the writers of two widely read libertine novels. How these authors responded to a cultural climate that viewed literature, and especially the novel, as seductive, sheds light on the perils and pleasures of authorship, the ways in which texts interact with the larger cultural discourse, and what eighteenth-century texts tell us about the dangers of reading or writing. Ultimately, Young argues, the seduction not in the text, but by the text raises questions about the nature of pleasure in eighteenth-century French literature and culture.
Over the past century, luxury has been increasingly celebrated in the sense that it is no longer a privilege (or attitude) of the European elite or America’s leisure class. It has become more ubiquitous and now, practically everyone can experience luxury, even luxury in architecture. Focusing on various contexts within Western Europe, Latin America and the United States, this book traces the myths and application of luxury within architecture, interiors and designed landscapes. Spanning from antiquity to the modern era, it sets out six historical categories of luxury - Sybaritic, Lucullan, architectural excess, rustic, neoEuropean and modern - and relates these to the built and unbuilt env...
You are What You Eat: Literary Probes into the Palate offers tantalizing essays immersed in the culture of food, expanded across genres, disciplines, and time. The entire collection of You Are What You Eat includes a diversity of approaches and foci from multicultural, national and international scholars and has a broad spectrum of subjects including: feminist theory, domesticity, children, film, cultural history, patriarchal gender ideology, mothering ideology, queer theory, politics, and poetry. Essays include studies of food-related works by John Milton, Emily Dickinson, Fay Weldon, Kenneth Grahame, Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, J. K. Rowling, Mother Goose, John Updike, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, Louise Erdrich, Amanda Hesser, Julie Powell, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Martin Scorsese, Bob Giraldi, Clarice Lispector, José Antônio Garcia, Fran Ross, and Gish Hen. The topic addresses a range of interests appealing to diverse audiences, expanding from college students to food enthusiasts and scholars.
Furnishing the Eighteenth Century provides an illuminating, interdisciplinary look into European and American furniture during the century that connoisseurs and collectors consider its golden age. Lavishly illustrated, this eclectic and lively collection of essays by historians, art historians, and literary scholars examines the many ways furniture of this period reflects the complex social and cultural issues that shaped this century in both Europe and America. In addition to furniture and portraiture, this diverse compilation considers literature, account books, and handbooks, allowing for a revealing look at how these furnishings created, contested, and subverted their cultures on both sides of the Atlantic. Ultimately, these essays make the past come alive, showing us what made this furniture meaningful in its own time, and why it is still meaningful today.
Exploring how the discrediting of Boucher and his school intersected with cultural debates about gender and class, this account of Boucher's art should persuade critics and admirers alike to take another, more considered look.
It is a common belief that in France the study of medieval literature as literature only began to gain recognition as a valid occupation for the scholar during the nineteenth century. It is well known that historians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries looked to the literary productions of the Middle Ages for materials useful to their researches, but it is only recently that the remarkable frequency of this reference has been appreciated and that scholars have become aware of an unbroken tradition of what might best be described as historically ori ented medievalism stretching from the sixteenth century to our own. The eighteenth century has drawn the greatest number of curious to this field, for it is evident that the surprisingly extensive researches undertaken then do much to explain the progress made a century later by the most celebrated generation of medievalistst. Very slowly we are coming to see the value of the contribution made by little known schol ars like La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Etienne Barbazan and the Comte de Caylus.
"Thinking Allegory Otherwise is a unique collection of essays by allegory specialists and other scholars who engage allegory in exciting new ways." "Not limited to an examination of literary texts and works of art, the essays focus on a wide range of topics, including architecture, philosophy, theater, science, and law. Indeed, all language is allegorical. This collection proves the truth of this statement, but more importantly, it shows the consequences of it. To think allegory otherwise is to think otherwise-forcing us to rethink not only the idea of allegory itself, but also the law and its execution, the literality offigurative abstraction, and the figurations upon which even hard science depends." --Book Jacket.
Daugherty considers the principles of literary art in a series of essays that focus on the nature of artistic vision and the creative individual's relationship to the world. The book reads like a master class on writing as practice.
Camus's description of the French hotel argues that architecture should please the senses and the mind.