Museums of the Mind

German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting

Häftad, Engelska, 2013

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Beskrivning

Museums of the Mind is the first book to explore the evolving relationship of collecting and the German literary imagination since the invention of the public museum. This study shows that in addition to redefining categories of art, history, and identity in modernity, the museum transforms the relationship between material objects and imaginative narratives. Using new categories, Peter McIsaac constructs a critical genealogy using key texts by Johann Goethe, Adalbert Stifter, Wilhelm Raabe, Rainer Maria Rilke, Ingeborg Bachmann, Siegfried Lenz, W. G. Sebald, and Durs Grünbein and the material record of Germanophone museums. McIsaac rethinks how fundamental cultural “truths” define what it means to belong to acculturated communities, showing that the activation of meaning in museums depends foremost on what people bring, in their minds, to those real and imagined environments, resulting in what McIsaac calls museums of the mind. This notion elucidates the vital shifts wrought by museum culture over the past two centuries and illuminates how museums, literature, and digital media shape thought and behavior today.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2013-01-15
Mått:178 x 254 x 24 mm
Vikt:635 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:336
Förlag:Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN:9780271058702

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Mer om författaren

Peter M. McIsaac is Assistant Professor of German at York University, Toronto. He is the author of numerous articles on German literature and culture and museum studies.

Recensioner i media

“It is the principal merit of this study to have highlighted the connections that bind the process of internalisation of memory in German literature with the tangible nature of museums as both objective and imaginative structures.”—Daria Santini Oxford Art Journal

Innehållsförteckning

ContentsIllustrationsAcknowledgmentsPart 1: Historical and Theoretical Coordinates of Museal and Literary Discourses1.The Museum Function, Inventoried Consciousness, and German-Speaking Literature2.Inventoried Consciousness Today: Durs Grünbein and W. G. SebaldPart 2: The Rise of the Public Museum and Bildung3.Ottilie Under Glass: Collecting as Disciplinary Regime in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften4.The Museum of Bildung: Collecting in Stifter’s NachsommerPart 3: Acculturation, Commodification, and the Nation5.Archaeology, Exhibition, and Tourism: Raabe’s “Keltische Knochen”6.Flâneur Optical, Collector Tactile: Rilke’s Neue Gedichte as Imaginary Museum LandscapePart 4: Narrative Interventions in the Museal Abuse of Culture7.“Quiet Violence”: The Army Museum in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina8.(Re)collecting the Twentieth Century: Siegfried Lenz’s HeimatmuseumConclusionNotesWorks CitedIndex