| Housing Problems: Writing and Architecture in Goethe, Walpole, Freud, and Heidegger Contributor(s): Bernstein, Susan (Author) |
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ISBN: 0804758557 ISBN-13: 9780804758550 Publisher: Stanford University Press OUR PRICE: $23.75 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 2008 Annotation: In "Housing Problems," Susan Bernstein studies the actual houses of Goethe, Walpole, and Freud alongside textual articulations of the architectonic problems of design, containment, shelter, and fragmentation. The linking of "text" and "house" brings into focus the historical tradition that has established a symmetry between design and instance, interior and exterior, author and house--an often unexamined fantasy of historicism. Taking as its point of departure Goethe's efforts to establish such a synthesis through the concept of "Bildung," the book traces the destabilization of this symmetry between house and self in Gothic literature and in narratives surrounding the founding of psychoanalysis. The interest in architecture holds open the tension between the generalizing figures of architectonics and the singular quality of housing features. These continue to mark theoretical thinking even as they dissolve and withdraw, as in Heidegger's "house of Being." |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - German |
| Dewey: 809.933 |
| LCCN: 2008006694 |
| Series: Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics |
| Physical Information: 0.65" H x 6.07" W x 9.02" (0.74 lbs) 216 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In Housing Problems, Susan Bernstein studies the actual houses of Goethe, Walpole, and Freud alongside textual articulations of the architectonic problems of design, containment, shelter, and fragmentation. The linking of text and house brings into focus the historical tradition that has established a symmetry between design and instance, interior and exterior, author and house--an often unexamined fantasy of historicism. Taking as its point of departure Goethe's efforts to establish such a synthesis through the concept of Bildung, the book traces the destabilization of this symmetry between house and self in Gothic literature and in narratives surrounding the founding of psychoanalysis. The interest in architecture holds open the tension between the generalizing figures of architectonics and the singular quality of housing features. These continue to mark theoretical thinking even as they dissolve and withdraw, as in Heidegger's house of Being. |