Overview

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 Grunbein 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Peter M. McIsaac (Duke University)
Publisher:   Pennsylvania State University Press
Imprint:   Pennsylvania State University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   0.635kg
ISBN:  

9780271058702

ISBN 10:   0271058706
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   15 January 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments Part 1: Historical and Theoretical Coordinates of Museal and Literary Discourses 1. The Museum Function, Inventoried Consciousness, and German-Speaking Literature 2. Inventoried Consciousness Today: Durs Grünbein and W. G. Sebald Part 2: The Rise of the Public Museum and Bildung 3. Ottilie Under Glass: Collecting as Disciplinary Regime in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften 4. The Museum of Bildung: Collecting in Stifter’s Nachsommer Part 3: Acculturation, Commodification, and the Nation 5. Archaeology, Exhibition, and Tourism: Raabe’s “Keltische Knochen” 6. Flâneur Optical, Collector Tactile: Rilke’s Neue Gedichte as Imaginary Museum Landscape Part 4: Narrative Interventions in the Museal Abuse of Culture 7. “Quiet Violence”: The Army Museum in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina 8. (Re)collecting the Twentieth Century: Siegfried Lenz’s Heimatmuseum Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index

Reviews

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

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 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 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 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 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 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

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. </p> Daria Santini, <em>Oxford Art Journal</em></p>

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. </p>--Daria Santini, <em>Oxford Art Journal</em></p>

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

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

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

Author Information

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.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions