Poetry in a World of Things: Aesthetics and Empiricism in Renaissance Ekphrasis

Description: Poetry in a World of Things by Rachel Eisendrath We have become used to looking at art from a stance of detachment. In order to be objective, we create a "mental space" between ourselves and the objects of our investigation, separating internal and external worlds. This detachment dates back to the early modern period, when researchers in a wide variety of fields tried to describe material objects as "things in themselves"—things, that is, without the admixture of imagination. Generations of scholars have heralded this shift as the Renaissance "discovery" of the observable world. In Poetry in a World of Things, Rachel Eisendrath explores how poetry responded to this new detachment by becoming a repository for a more complex experience of the world. The book focuses on ekphrasis, the elaborate literary description of a thing, as a mode of resistance to this new empirical objectivity. Poets like Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare crafted highly artful descriptions that recovered the threatened subjective experience of the material world. In so doing, these poets reflected on the emergence of objectivity itself as a process that was often darker and more painful than otherwise acknowledged. This highly original book reclaims subjectivity as a decidedly poetic and human way of experiencing the material world and, at the same time, makes a case for understanding art objects as fundamentally unlike any other kind of objects. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Rachel Eisendrath is assistant professor of English and chair of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Review "Rachel Eisendraths elegant and learned Poetry in a World of Things: Aesthetics and Empiricism in Renaissance Ekphrasis is the perfect study for these times... There is much to admire about this book. Its style is distinctive, never self-effacing, and often arresting."-- "Genre""In this terrific and wide-ranging book, Rachel Eisendrath provides a nuanced account of Renaissance defenses of aesthetic pleasure that challenges the traditional association of the early modern period with new scientific notions of objectivity. At the same time, she makes a powerful contribution to contemporary debates in the humanities about distant reading, surface reading, the new materialism, and thing theory, in the process reasserting the traditional virtues of humanistic education. Poetry in a World of Things is an exceptionally well-informed, theoretically sophisticated, and beautifully written work." -Victoria Kahn, University of California, Berkeley-- "Victoria Kahn, University of California, Berkeley" Review Quote "Why do we value critical objectivity? This is the basic question of Eisendraths book, a study of some early encounters between art and empiricism, and of the literary strategies by which a poem or a painting might save itself from mere objecthood. Petrarch, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare are its heroes, but it is just as much a book for our times, a beautifully written tutorial in how to tell the difference between a work and a thing, and why that difference matters." Details ISBN022651661X Year 2018 ISBN-10 022651661X ISBN-13 9780226516615 Format Paperback Author Rachel Eisendrath Media Book Imprint University of Chicago Press Subtitle Aesthetics and Empiricism in Renaissance Ekphrasis Place of Publication Chicago, IL Country of Publication United States DEWEY 809.1031 Pages 208 Illustrations 12 Illustrations Short Title Poetry in a World of Things Language English Publication Date 2018-04-06 UK Release Date 2018-04-06 AU Release Date 2018-04-06 NZ Release Date 2018-04-06 US Release Date 2018-04-06 Publisher The University of Chicago Press Audience Professional & Vocational We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:117994267;

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