Books & Editions by Thomas Harrison
304 pages | 3 color plates, 73 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2021
“Always,” wrote Philip Larkin, “it is b... more 304 pages | 3 color plates, 73 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2021
“Always,” wrote Philip Larkin, “it is by bridges that we live.” Bridges represent our aspirations to connect, to soar across divides. And it is the unfinished business of these aspirations that makes bridges such stirring sights, especially when they are marvels of ingenuity.
A rich compendium of myths, superstitions, literary and ideological figurations, as well as architectural and musical illustrations, Of Bridges organizes a poetic and philosophical history of bridges into nine thematic clusters. Leaping in lucid prose between seemingly unrelated times and places, Thomas Harrison gives a panoramic account of the diverse meanings and valences of human bridges, questioning why they are built and where they lead. He investigates bridges as flashpoints in war and the mega-bridges of our globalized world. He probes links forged by religion between life’s transience and eternity and the consolidating ties of music, illustrated in a case study of the blues. He illuminates the real and symbolic crossings facing migrants each day and the affective connections that make persons and societies cohere. In fine and intricate readings of literature, philosophy, art, and geography, Harrison engages in a profound reflection on how bridges form and transform cultural communities. Interdisciplinary and deeply lyrical, Of Bridges is a mesmerizing, vertiginous tale of bridges both visible and invisible, both lived and imagined.
Contents & Review Quotes: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo60514698.html
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California Italian Studies, volume 8/1, 2018
To access this essay & volume, click here: https://escholarship.org/uc/ismrg_cisj --The special i... more To access this essay & volume, click here: https://escholarship.org/uc/ismrg_cisj --The special issue includes sixteen theoretical essays + poems and poetics by forty contemporary Italian poets addressing the "ends of poetry" in the dual sense of “objectives” and “coming no more to pass.”
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Long since out of print, this volume collects 23 original essays by Agamben, Colli, Girard, Harri... more Long since out of print, this volume collects 23 original essays by Agamben, Colli, Girard, Harrison (RP and T), Magris, Montinari, Nancy, Serres, Vattimo, and others.
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Editori Riuniti, Roma, 2014
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Castelvecchi, 2017
Trans. F. Lopiparo and M. Codebò
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Selected Essays by Thomas Harrison
A che cosa servono le scienze sociali? (engramma saggi | ronzanieditore), 2023
Introduction to the posthumous Dal Lago volume.
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Theory, Culture & Society, 2023
This essay, a draft of which is downloadable here, was published online in THEORY, CULTURE & SOCI... more This essay, a draft of which is downloadable here, was published online in THEORY, CULTURE & SOCIETY on Dec 29, 2023: https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764231208405. It takes Georg Simmel's essay on Rome to be paradigmatic of a method the philosopher practices for years, symbolized by the image of a plumb line cast from the surface of the sea to its bottom. Here Simmel shows how contrasting urban phenomena receive meaning through multiply tense relations that constitute a strangely coherent whole. Only a circular understanding can adequately comprehend such coherence, transcending not only objective details, but also the reader's own subject positions, in occupation of a space between the inner and outer reaches of phenomenal experience. The architectonics of Rome allegorize cultural complexities into which interpreting selves must venture to understand where they and their world stand.
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In COSTELLAZIONI 10: "Eco-Leopardi”. Visioni apocalittiche e critica dell’umano nel poeta della Natura, ed. Patrizio Ceccagnoli e Franco D'Intino, 2019
Lessons borne by Giacomo Leopardi’s post-anthropocentric thinking for contemporary ecological thi... more Lessons borne by Giacomo Leopardi’s post-anthropocentric thinking for contemporary ecological thinking.
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CALIFORNIA ITALIAN STUDIES. ENDS OF POETRY 8:1 (2018): 1-7, 2018
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In STORIA E STORIOGRAFIA DI CARLO MICHELSTAEDTER, ed. Valerio Cappozzo, Univ. Mississippi: Romanc... more In STORIA E STORIOGRAFIA DI CARLO MICHELSTAEDTER, ed. Valerio Cappozzo, Univ. Mississippi: Romance Monographs, 2017, pp. 25-46.
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CALIFORNIA ITALIAN STUDIES: MOVING IMAGES 7:1 (2017): 1-20, 2017
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w40187f) . This article generalizes the notion of offscreen spa... more https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2w40187f) . This article generalizes the notion of offscreen space in cinema to the sculpture of Michelangelo, the photography of Luigi Ghirri, the cinema of Antonioni, and the writings of Leopardi, Manzoni, Celati, Tabucchi, Ortese and Montale.
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Compar(a)ison: An International Journal of Comparative Literature 1-2, Narrative and Reflection, ed. Stefano Ercolino and Christy Wampole (2010): 171-186.
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In Inquieto pensare. Scritti in onore di Massimo Cacciari, ed. Emanuele Severino and Vincenzo Vitiello (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015): 271-282.
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In Elsa Morante’s Politics of Writing: Rethinking Subjectivity, History, and the Power of Art, ed. Stefania Lucamante (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015), pp. 161-172
A study of the novel in light of the film and vice versa.
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Republics of Letters. A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts 4:1 (2014): 1-14, 2014
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In Carlo Michelstaedter: Kunst – Poesie – Philosophie, ed. Yvonne Hütter (Tübingen: Narr Verlag, 2014): 49-62.
A study of the threshold between authenticity and self-fabrication in the ancillary works of C. M... more A study of the threshold between authenticity and self-fabrication in the ancillary works of C. Michelstaedter
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Books & Editions by Thomas Harrison
“Always,” wrote Philip Larkin, “it is by bridges that we live.” Bridges represent our aspirations to connect, to soar across divides. And it is the unfinished business of these aspirations that makes bridges such stirring sights, especially when they are marvels of ingenuity.
A rich compendium of myths, superstitions, literary and ideological figurations, as well as architectural and musical illustrations, Of Bridges organizes a poetic and philosophical history of bridges into nine thematic clusters. Leaping in lucid prose between seemingly unrelated times and places, Thomas Harrison gives a panoramic account of the diverse meanings and valences of human bridges, questioning why they are built and where they lead. He investigates bridges as flashpoints in war and the mega-bridges of our globalized world. He probes links forged by religion between life’s transience and eternity and the consolidating ties of music, illustrated in a case study of the blues. He illuminates the real and symbolic crossings facing migrants each day and the affective connections that make persons and societies cohere. In fine and intricate readings of literature, philosophy, art, and geography, Harrison engages in a profound reflection on how bridges form and transform cultural communities. Interdisciplinary and deeply lyrical, Of Bridges is a mesmerizing, vertiginous tale of bridges both visible and invisible, both lived and imagined.
Contents & Review Quotes: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo60514698.html
Selected Essays by Thomas Harrison
“Always,” wrote Philip Larkin, “it is by bridges that we live.” Bridges represent our aspirations to connect, to soar across divides. And it is the unfinished business of these aspirations that makes bridges such stirring sights, especially when they are marvels of ingenuity.
A rich compendium of myths, superstitions, literary and ideological figurations, as well as architectural and musical illustrations, Of Bridges organizes a poetic and philosophical history of bridges into nine thematic clusters. Leaping in lucid prose between seemingly unrelated times and places, Thomas Harrison gives a panoramic account of the diverse meanings and valences of human bridges, questioning why they are built and where they lead. He investigates bridges as flashpoints in war and the mega-bridges of our globalized world. He probes links forged by religion between life’s transience and eternity and the consolidating ties of music, illustrated in a case study of the blues. He illuminates the real and symbolic crossings facing migrants each day and the affective connections that make persons and societies cohere. In fine and intricate readings of literature, philosophy, art, and geography, Harrison engages in a profound reflection on how bridges form and transform cultural communities. Interdisciplinary and deeply lyrical, Of Bridges is a mesmerizing, vertiginous tale of bridges both visible and invisible, both lived and imagined.
Contents & Review Quotes: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo60514698.html
Inhalt:
Yvonne Hütter
Einleitung
Daniela Bini
Ritratti e autoritratti: un’esigenza espressionistica
Valerio Cappozzo
Il percorso poetico di Carlo Michelstaedter con due inediti del 1903
Thomas Harrison
Autenticità o auto-parodia?
Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann
Wie transzendiert man ein verdrehtes Bewusstsein? Anmerkungen zur Nähe von Carlo Michelstaedter und Jean-Paul Sartre
Rosalia Peluso
Il est temps! Persuadersi per le vie della storia – Michelstaedter e Benjamin
Yvonne Hütter
Tendenzen der Forschung 1980-2012
Abstracts der Beiträge / abstracts dei contributi
Die Autorinnen und Autoren / Gli autori
In memory of Marguerite Waller, of the University of California, Riverside, and co-editor, with Frank Burke and Marita Gubareva, of Wiley Blackwell's A Companion to Federico Fellini, 2020. YouTube recording of the Webinar:
https://youtu.be/P-QKT6TZnDo. Information about event and participants: https://iiclosangeles.esteri.it/iic_losangeles/en/gli_eventi/calendario/2020/05/fellini100-webinar.html
A Critical Edition
Edited and translated by Patrick Barron - Introduction by Patrick Barron - Contributions by Marina Spunta; Monica Seger; Rebecca West; Matteo Gilebbi; Serenella Iovino; Michele Ronchi Stefanati; Damiano Benvegnù; Thomas Harrison; Massimo Rizzante and Franco Arminio
Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati’s 1989 philosophical travelogue Towards the River’s Mouth explores perception, memory, place and space as it recounts a series of journeys across the Po River Valley in northern Italy. The book seeks to document the “new Italian landscape” where divisions between the urban and rural were being blurred into what Celati terms “a new variety of countryside where one breathes an air of urban solitude.” Celati traveled by train, by bus, and on foot, at times with photographer Luigi Ghirri, at others exploring on his own without predetermined itineraries, taking notes on the places he encountered, watching and listening to people in stations, fields, bars, houses, squares, and hotels. In this way the book took shape as Celati traveled and wrote, gathering and rewriting his notes into “stories of observation” (9). Celati attempts to find meaning by seeking the uncertain limits of our ability to discern everyday surroundings. “Every observation,” as he puts it, “needs liberate itself from the familiar codes it carries, to go adrift in the middle of all things not understood, in order to arrive at an outlet, where it must feel lost.”
At the forefront of the then-nascent spatial turn in the humanities, Towards the River’s Mouth is a key text of what in recent years has been variously termed literary cartography, literary geography, and spatial poetics. Its call to carefully and affectionately examine our surroundings while attempting to step back from habitual ways of perceiving and moving through space, has resonated as much with literary scholars and other writers as with geographers and architects. By now a classic of twentieth-century Italian literature, it has in recent years garnered increasing attention, especially with the growth of ecocriticism and new materialism within the environmental humanities.
This edition, translated into English for the first time, features an introduction that places Towards the River’s Mouth in the context of Celati’s other work, and a selection of ten scholarly essays by prominent figures in comparative literature and Italian studies.