Poetics of Place: How Ancient Buildings Inspired Great Writing

By Elizabeth Riorden

Book Overview

Poetics of Place: How Ancient Buildings Inspired Great Writing shows students how seminal pieces of architecture across time inspired the works of great writers. This anthology draws connections between human built environments--spanning from the cave paintings of the Paleolithic Era to the end of the Middle Ages--and the travel accounts, novels, and poetry inspired by these architectural feats.

This collection features readings by Victor Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Agatha Christie, and Thomas Hardy, to name a few, framed by introductions that provide context regarding the reading's architectural muse and its historical significance. Through these accounts, students visit the Parthenon of Athens, the Notre-Dame of Paris, Stonehenge, the Roman City of Palmyra, the Duomo of Florence, and more, exploring their history, construction, and artistic reception.

Poetics of Place is a cross-disciplinary anthology designed to serve as a supplementary text for foundational courses in architectural history, art history, cultural studies, and archaeology.

Elizabeth Riorden earned her B.A. in ancient and medieval culture from Brown University and her masters level first professional degree in architecture from Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. She is an associate professor of architecture at the University of Cincinnati. Her specific areas of academic expertise include architectural and urban topics ranging from the Early Bronze Age cities of the Aegean, to diachronic analyses of Mediterranean cities, to preservation, and to contemporary issues in architectural design.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1516517547
• ISBN13: 9781516517541
• Release Date: July 2018
• Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
• Length: 126 Pages
• Weight: 0.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"