A History of Silence: From the Renaissance to the Present Day

ISBN-13: 9781509517350 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 160 str.

Alain Corbin

Opis

Silence is not simply the absence of noise. It is within us, in that inner citadel which great writers, thinkers, scholars and people of faith have cultivated over the centuries. Today, when noise is everywhere, distinguished historian Alain Corbin goes back to a time when speech was rare and precious.

Recenzje

"Alain Corbin is one of the most imaginative historians writing anywhere. His series of brilliant studies of the senses includes his auditory landscape of the nineteenth century. Here, the search for silence, its sounds and meanings. This is a gem, beautiful and thought–provoking."
John Merriman, Charles Seymour Professor of History, Yale University

"Alain Corbin is renowned for pushing historical writing into new areas. In A History of Silence he goes further still: not only into the history of an elusive and many–sided concept, but into its philosophy, theology and literature too."
Robert Tombs, University of Cambridge

"The book brims with ideas: on painting as silent speech ; writing as the interruption of silence; the cruel silence of God; and the gravid silence of forests, dead–calm seas and snowfall."
Times Higher Education

"Terrific. ... a mischievous historian of the senses, Alain Corbin dares to devote these eloquent pages to silence, a subject hitherto neglected by his colleagues. Far more than the ′mere absence of noise,′ his book makes us feel the thousand and one precious qualities of silence that have enchanted writers and poets over the centuries."
Le Point

Spis treści

• Acknowledgements
• Prelude
• Chapter 1. Silence and the intimacy of places
• Chapter 2. The silences of nature
• Chapter 3. The search for silence
• Chapter 4. The educations and disciplines of silence
• Chapter 5. Interlude: Joseph and Nazareth, or absolute silence
• Chapter 6. The speech of silence
• Chapter 7. The tactics of silence
• Chapter 8. From the silences of love to the silence of hate
• Chapter 9. Postlude: The tragedy of silence
• Notes

O autorze

Alain Corbin is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Paris I, Sorbonne.