Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature

Andrew Hui is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Yale–NUS College, Singapore.

"Written with a lucid, elegant sensibility and profound erudition, this study interprets anew the shifts in meaning and value of ruins from classical Latin, to the Romance languages, to English lyrics. At the heart of his analysis Hui uncovers and probes the central problems raised by thinkers on the archeology of ruins: the inner relation between literature and ruins, the ethics of finitude they embody, their future, and the place of ruins at the new beginnings of history. My mind expands as I read it, and I can easily predict others will respond the same way." -- -Giuseppe Mazzotta Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian, Yale University

• List of Figures and Color Plates Introduction: A Japanese Friend Part I 1. The Rebirth of Poetics 2. The Rebirth of Ruins Part II 3. Petrarch's Vestigia and the Presence of Absence 4. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and the Erotics of Fragments 5. Du Bellay's Cendre and the Formless Signifier 6. Spenser's Moniments and the Allegory of Ruins Epilogue: Fallen Castles and Summer Grass Acknowledgments Notes Index