Writers' Houses and the Making of Memory

by Hendrix; Harald

• ISBN13: 9780415957427
• ISBN10: 0415957427
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book examines the ways in which writers' houses contribute to the making of memory. It shows that houses built or inhabited by poets and novelists both reflect and construct the author's private and artistic persona; it also demonstrates how this materialized process of self-fashioning is subsequently appropriated within various strategies and policies of cultural memory.

Table of Contents

Introduction : Writers' Houses as Media of Expression and Remembrance: From Self-Fashioning to Cultural Memory

Cultural Memory

The Early Modern Invention of Literary Tourism: Petrarch's Houses in France and Italy

Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford: Bardolatry Reconsidered

Remembrance and Revision: Goethe's Houses in Frankfurt and Weimar

Goethe's Home in the "First City of the World": The Making of the Casa di Goethe

Abbotsford: Dislocation and Cultural Remembrance

Myth and Memory: Reading the Bronte Parsonage

Memory Regained: Founding and Funding the Keats Shelley Memorial House in Rome

The Rooms of Memory: The Praz Museum in Rome

Self-Fashioning

Casa Vasari in Arezzo: Writing and Decorating the Artist's House

In Vasto and in London: The Rossettis' Houses as Mirrors of Dislocated National Identities

William Morris's Houses and the Shaping of Aesthetic Socialism

Memories of Exotism and Empire: Henry Rider Haggard's Wunderkammer at Ditchingham House

"La Maison d'un artiste": The Goncourts, Bibelots and Fin de Siecle Interiority

Collecting and Autobiography: A Note on the Origins of "La Casa della vita" by Mario Praz and its Relation to Edmond de Goncourt's "La Maison d'un artiste"

A Nomadic Investment in History: Pierre Loti's House at Rochefort-sur-Mer

"Une chambre mentale": Proust's Solitude

Epilogue

The Appeal of Writers' Houses: "That Moment of Contact -- Practical Yet Mystical -- Between Writer and Reader"

Bibliography

Contributors

Index

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