Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting - Couverture souple

McIsaac, Peter M.

 
9780271058702: Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting

Synopsis

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 Grünbein 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.

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À propos de l'auteur

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.

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Autres éditions populaires du même titre

9780271029917: Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting

Edition présentée

ISBN 10 :  0271029919 ISBN 13 :  9780271029917
Editeur : Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007
Couverture rigide