Description
Ownership battles over the marbles removed from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin have been rumbling into invective, pleading, and counterclaims for two centuries. The emotional temperature around them is high, and steering across the vast past to safe anchor in a brilliant heritage is tricky. The stories around antiquities become distorted by the pull of ownership, and it is these stories that urge Patricia Vigderman into her own exploration of their inspiring legacy in her compelling extended essay, The Real Life of the Parthenon. Vigderman's own journey began at the Parthenon, but curiosity edged her further onto the sea between antiquity and the present. She set out to seek the broken temples and amphorae, the mysterious smiles of archaic sculpture, and the finely hammered gold of a funeral wreath among the jumbled streets of modern Athens, the fertile fields of Sicily, the mozzarella buffalo of Paestum. Guided along the way toward the enduring landscapes and fractured history by archeologists, classicists, historians, and artists-and by the desire they inspire-she was caught by ongoing, contemporary local life among the ruins. Gathering present meaning and resonance for the once and future remains of vanished glory, The Real Life of the Parthenon illuminates an important but shadowy element of our common cultural life: the living dynamic between loss and delight.
Author: Patricia Vigderman
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Published: 01/24/2018
Pages: 200
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.50w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9780814254585
ISBN10: 0814254586
BISAC Categories:
- Architecture | History | Ancient & Classical
- Art | History | Ancient & Classical
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
About the Author
Patricia Vigderman is Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. She is the author of Possibility: Essays Against Despair and The Memory Palace of Isabella Stewart Gardner.
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