In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature
Books / Paperback
Books › Social Science › Archaeology
ISBN: 1400030862 / Publisher: Vintage, October 2003
Combines elements of history, memoir, and travelogue into a meditation on the meaning of ruins and their hold on the human imagination, ranging from the plains of Troy to the monuments of ancient Rome, as he describes the experiences of artists and writers who were fascinated with ruins around the world. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.
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In this enchanting meditation on ruins, Christopher Woodward takes us on a thousand-year journey from the plains of Troy to the monuments of ancient Rome, from the crumbling palaces of Sicily, Cuba, and Zanzibar to the rubble of the London Blitz. With an exquisite sense of romantic melancholy, we encounter the teenage Byron in the moldering Newstead Abbey, Flaubert watching the buzzards on the pyramids, Henry James in the Colosseum, and Freud at Pompeii. We travel the Appian Way with Dickens and behold the Baths of Caracalla with Shelley. An exhilarating tour, at once elegant and stimulating, In Ruins casts an exalting spell as it explores the bewitching power of architectural remains and their persistent hold on the imagination.
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