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Books > History > World history > General
Oscar Wilde said, 'Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates
Life.' Was he right? In Cult of Progress, David Olusoga travels the
world to piece together the shared histories that link nations. We
discover what happened to art in the great Age of Discovery, when
civilisations encountered each other for the first time. Although
undoubtedly a period of conquest and destruction, it was also one
of mutual curiosity, global trade and the exchange of ideas. A few
hundred years on, we see how the Industrial Revolution transformed
the world, impacting every corner and every civilisation from the
cotton mills of the Midlands to Napoleon's conquest of Egypt, the
decimation of both Native American and Maori populations, and the
advent of photography in Paris in 1839. Incredible art - both
looted and created - relays the key events and their outcomes
throughout the world.
Beginning with Erich Auerbach's reflections on the Goethean concept
of World Literature, Ottmar Ette unfolds the theory and practice of
Literatures of the World. Today, only those literary theories that
are oriented upon a history of movement are still capable of doing
justice to the confusing diversity of highly dynamic, worldwide
transformations. This is because they examine transareal pathways
in the field of literature. This volume captures literary processes
of exchange and transformation between the Mediterranean, Atlantic
and Pacific as well as the interplay of different ways of narrating
space and time. Thus, this volume speaks from a fractal point of
view and unfolds multiple perspectives. Literatures of the World
allows the reader to think in different logical frameworks at the
same time, therefore shaping our future on the basis of the
diversity of humankind.
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