Research Catalog

Title

Venice rediscovered / John Pemble.

Author

Pemble, John.

Publication

Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 220 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map; 24 cm

Summary

How does a city become an icon? During the 200 years since its political extinction, the shabby relic of a despised tyranny has been transformed into a great modern cultural symbol by the work of such eminent Venetophiles as Ruskin, Proust, Mann, and Henry James. John Pemble shows how American and European outsiders developed an obsession with the idea of a dying city which must be preserved at all costs; how they reconstructed the imagery as well as the architecture of Venice, and how the Victorian need to restore was supplanted by a wish to conserve without altering the remains of this fragile inheritance. This engaging and novel interpretation links the transfiguration of Venice to social and intellectual changes in Europe and North America. Analysing the appeal of the city to novelists, historians, and apostles of 'culture', the author demonstrates how changing perceptions of the city reveal much about the development of modern Western sensibility.

Subject

• Venice (Italy) > Civilization

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [192]-211) and index.

Contents

pt. 1. Unwritten History. I.A Carnival Resumes. II. The New Patricians. III. Strange Secrets and Broken Fortunes -- pt. 2. History Rewritten. IV. A Window on the Past. V. Retreat from Legend -- pt. 3. Beyond History. VI. Time's Ruin. VII. The World's Inheritance. VIII. Apotheosis.

ISBN

• 0198205015
• 9780198205012
• 0192853287 (pbk)
• 9780192853288 (pbk)

LCCN

94017844

OCLC

• ocm30625841
• 30625841
• SCSB-2044323

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library