ENGLISH

On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection

By Susan Stewart

Book information

Publisher
Duke University Press Books
Year
1992
ISBN
0822313669, 9780822313663
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
16 MB (17173168 bytes)
Edition
10
Pages
232\231
Topic
Literature
Time added
2016-07-28 09:38:53
Criticism & Theory;History & Criticism;LiteratureLanguage & Grammar;Reference;Cultural;Anthropology

Description

Miniature books, eighteenth-century novels, Tom Thumb weddings, tall tales, and objects of tourism and nostalgia: this diverse group of cultural forms is the subject of On Longing, a fascinating analysis of the ways in which everyday objects are narrated to animate or realize certain versions of the world. Originally published in 1984 (Johns Hopkins University Press), and now available in paperback for the first time, this highly original book draws on insights from semiotics and from psychoanalytic, feminist, and Marxist criticism. Addressing the relations of language to experience, the body to scale, and narratives to objects, Susan Stewart looks at the "miniature" as a metaphor for interiority and at the "gigantic" as an exaggeration of aspects of the exterior. In the final part of her essay Stewart examines the ways in which the "souvenir" and the "collection" are objects mediating experience in time and space.

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