Abstract
Taking as a point of departure Lord Byron’s reflections on the meaning of the ruined Parthenon, this essay traverses the long legacy of ruin thinking in the Anglo-Αmerican imagination and argues for its relevance to the present day. Referencing earlier and recent strands in the rich scholarship on the trope of the ruin, the authors contextualize the essays of the volume; particular emphasis is laid on the volume’s especial focus on the ruin as metaphor and as a historical materiality, as these are probed in individual chapters that discuss ruin and ruination across British and American literature, continental theory and philosophy.
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Notes
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The article in Time was written by Simon Shuster, reporting from Athens after the rejection of the proposed bailout by a referendum which took place on 5 July 2015. On 13 July 2015, however, the Greek government reached an agreement with the European authorities for a 3-year-bailout with even harsher austerity conditions than the ones originally proposed.
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ANTI, 6th Athens Biennale, 26/10-9/12/2018, curated by Stefanie Hessler, Poka-Yio. Kostis Stafylakis, https://anti.athensbiennale.org/en/6th-athens-biennale-anti (accessed 8 December 2018).
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Cao Fei, Rumba II: Nomad, 2015, video 14 mins 16 secs, sound by Dickson Dee, commissioned by GUCCI, http://www.caofei.com/works.aspx?year=2015&wtid=3 (accessed 9 December 2018).
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Julia Hell’s book was published in early 2019, after the chapters of this book had been completed.
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Mitsi, E., Despotopoulou, A., Dimakopoulou, S., Aretoulakis, E. (2019). Introduction. In: Mitsi, E., Despotopoulou, A., Dimakopoulou, S., Aretoulakis, E. (eds) Ruins in the Literary and Cultural Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26905-0_1
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