New Research in GSLL

Focusing on the textuality of ruins in literary works about disintegration and survival, Decay and Afterlife combines an impressive array of literary, philosophical, and historiographical works both canonical and neglected, and encompassing Latin, Italian, French, German, and English sources. By addressing ruins as textual forms, Prica examines them in their extraordinary geographical and temporal breadth, highlighting their variability and reflexivity, and uncovers new lines of aesthetic and intellectual affinity. Her book traverses eight hundred years of intellectual and literary history, from Seneca and Petrarch to Hegel, Goethe, and Georg Simmel.