0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Books

Buy Now

Sham Ruins - A User's Guide Loot Price: R634
Discovery Miles 6 340
Sham Ruins - A User's Guide: Brian Willems

Sham Ruins - A User's Guide

Brian Willems

Series: Routledge Focus on Literature

 (sign in to rate)
Loot Price R634 Discovery Miles 6 340 | Repayment Terms: R59 pm x 12*

Bookmark and Share

Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days

Donate to Against Period Poverty

In the middle of the eigtheenth century, a new fad found its way into the gardens of England's well-to-do: building fake Gothic ruins. Newly constructed castle towers and walls looked like they were already falling apart, even on the first day of their creation. Made of stone, plaster, or even canvas, these "sham ruins" are often considered an embarrassing blip in English architectural history. However, Sham Ruins: A User's Guide expands the specific example of the sham ruin into a general principle to examine the way purposely broken objects can be used to both uncover old truths and invent new ones. Along with architecture, work by Ivan Vladislavić, Tom Stoppard, Alain Mabanckou, Aleksei Fedorchenko, Michael Haneke, and Sturtevant is used to develop this thesis, as well as artifacts such as pre-torn jeans, fake histories, and broken screen apps. Using these examples, one of the key questions the book raises is: what is it that sham ruins ruin? In other words, if real ruins are ruins of what they actually are, then sham ruins should be considered ruins of what they are not. Thus sham ruins are about imposing new meaning where such meaning does not and should not exist. They also can show how things we think are functioning well are actually already broken. Sham ruins do this, and much more, by being lies, ruses, and embarrassments. This is what gives them the power with which we can think about objects in new, unintended ways.

General

Imprint: Taylor & Francis
Country of origin: United Kingdom
Series: Routledge Focus on Literature
Release date: September 2023
Authors: Brian Willems
Dimensions: 216 x 138mm (L x W)
Pages: 70
ISBN-13: 978-1-03-208135-9
Categories: Books
LSN: 1-03-208135-X
Barcode: 9781032081359

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!

Partners