Overview

The city of Pompeii has had an enormous impact on Western imaginations since its rediscovery under the ashes of the volcano that destroyed it in 79 CE. In the 250 years since excavations began, Pompeii has helped to bring the ancient world to life for everyone, from music hall audiences to gentleman scholars, and it continues to have an impact on the way in which we think about the past, and the human condition itself. The contributors to this generously illustrated volume, who include the novelist Robert Harris, in a recorded interview, investigate how Pompeii has been used in film, fiction, and art on both sides of the Atlantic over three centuries. They explore the many different ways in which Pompeii inhabits our imaginations: as ghostly relic of human suffering, romantic ruin, model of cultural inspiration, home of a distant, decadent culture, and comforting model for everyday life.

Full Product Details

Author:   Shelley Hales (Senior Lecturer in Art & Visual Culture, Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Bristol) ,  Joanna Paul (Postgate Early Career Fellow in Classics, School of Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology, University of Liverpool)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 13.50cm , Height: 3.70cm , Length: 21.90cm
Weight:   0.758kg
ISBN:  

9780199569366

ISBN 10:   0199569363
Pages:   440
Publication Date:   17 November 2011
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

1: Shelley Hales & Joanna Paul: Introduction: Ruins and Reconstructions 2: Thorsten Fitzon: A Tamed 'desire for images': Goethe's Repeated Approaches to Pompeii 3: Constanze Baum: Ruined Waking Thoughts: William Beckford as a Visitor to Pompeii 4: Victoria C. Gardner Coates: Making History: Pliny's Letters to Tacitus and Angelica Kauffman's `Pliny and his Mother at Misenum' 5: Barbara Witucki: Site, Sight, and Symbol: Pompeii and Vesuvius in `Corinne, or Italy' 6: Stephen Harrison: Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii: Recreating the City 7: Meilee D. Bridges: Objects of Affection: Necromantic Pathos in Bulwer-Lytton's City of the Dead 8: Genevieve Liveley: Delusion and Dream in Theophile Gautier's `Arria Marcella: Souvenir de Pompei' 9: Sarah Betzer: Archaeology Meets Fantasy: Chasseriau's Pompeii in Nineteenth-Century Paris 10: Luna Figurelli: Italian Classical Revival Painters and the 'Southern Question' 11: Shelley Hales: Cities of the Dead 12: Eric Moormann: Christians and Jews at Pompeii in Late Nineteenth-Century Fiction 13: Daniel Orrells: Rocks, Ghosts and Footprints: Freudian Archaeology 14: Margaret Malamud: On the Edge of the Volcano: `The Last Days of Pompeii' in the Early American Republic 15: Jon L. Seydl: Experiencing The Last Days of Pompeii in Late Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia 16: Francesca Spiegel: In Search of Lost Time and Pompeii 17: Jeremy Hartnett: Excavation Photographs and the Imagining of Pompeii's Streets: Vittorio Spinazzola and the Via dell'Abbondanza 18: Kenneth Lapatin: The Getty Villa: Art, Architecture, and Aristocratic Self-Fashioning in the Mid-Twentieth Century 19: Matthew Fox: Pompeii in Roberto Rossellini's `Journey to Italy' 20: Kate Fisher & Rebecca Langlands: The Censorship Myth and the Secret Museum 21: Sarah Levin-Richardson: Modern Tourists, Ancient Sexualities: Looking at Looking in Pompeii's Brothel and the Secret Cabinet 22: Writing Pompeii: An Interview with Robert Harris 23: Joanna Paul: Pompeii, the Holocaust, and World War Two 24: Pompeii and the Cambridge Latin Course 25: Andrew Wallace-Hadrill: Ruins and Forgetfulness: The Case of Herculaneum

Reviews

The editors of Pompeii in the Public Imagination have given us a stimulating and provocative collection of essays in interpretation of this ruin that changes from year to year, yet always remains the same. * Professor Eugene Dwyer, Reviews in History * This is a thought-provoking and wide-ranging work, bringing together such diverse subjects as changing attitudes to Pompeii's erotic material and the excavations' impact on 19th-century Italy's emerging political identity. Its often-surprising insights shed new light on this most familiar of sites. * Current World Archaeology *

This is a thought-provoking and wide-ranging work, bringing together such diverse subjects as changing attitudes to Pompeii's erotic material and the excavations' impact on 19th-century Italy's emerging political identity. Its often-surprising insights shed new light on this most familiar of sites. Current World Archaeology The editors of Pompeii in the Public Imagination have given us a stimulating and provocative collection of essays in interpretation of this ruin that changes from year to year, yet always remains the same. Professor Eugene Dwyer, Reviews in History

Author Information

Shelley Hales is Senior Lecturer in Art & Visual Culture, Department of Classics & Ancient History, University of Bristol. Joanna Paul is Postgate Early Career Fellow in Classics, School of Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology, University of Liverpool

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