Viareggio Prize (Premio Viareggio / Premio Letterario Viareggio-Rèpaci)
Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Thought & Cultural Ctiticism)
A collection of nine essays that uses the idea of distance to move across myth, images, representation, religious history, and methods of observation. From the idea that too much closeness distorts and too much distance obscures, it reconsiders the conditions of perception and interpretation.
Work Information
Distance is not an abstraction here, but a way to see the world anew.
Carlo Ginzburg builds a line of thought around distance, moving through myth, images, religious iconography, and historical observation. The essays show that distance from an object can become either an obstacle to understanding or a method for deepening it.
Review Summaries
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The breadth of the essays and the way estrangement becomes a tool for thought are especially valued. Its strength lies in how naturally it turns questions about history and images into epistemological inquiry.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Columbia Univ Pr
- Published
- 2001-07-01
- Pages
- 261 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.51 x 1.91 x 24.13 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780231119603
- ISBN-10
- 0231119607
- Price
- 5326 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/History/Americas/United States
"I am a Jew who was born and who grew up in a Catholic country; I never had a religious education; my Jewish identity is in large measure the result of persecution." This brief autobiographical statement is a key to understanding Carlo Ginzburg's interest in the topic of his latest book: distance. In nine linked essays, he addresses the question: "What is the exact distance that permits us to see things as they are?" To understand our world, suggests Ginzburg, it is necessary to find a balance between being so close to the object that our vision is warped by familiarity or so far from it that the distance becomes distorting. Opening with a reflection on the sense of feeling astray, of familiarization and defamiliarization, the author goes on to consider the concepts of perspective, representation, imagery, and myth. Arising from the theme of proximity is the recurring issue of the opposition between Jews and Christiansa topic Ginzburg explores with an impressive array of examples, from Latin translations of Greek and Hebrew scriptures to Pope John Paul II's recent apology to the Jews for antisemitism. Moving with equal acuity from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne to Voltaire, touching on philosophy, history, philology, and ethics, and including examples from present-day popular culture, the book offers a new perspective on the universally relevant theme of distance.
Carlo Ginzburg teaches at UCLA, where he is the Franklin D. Murphy Chair of Italian Renaissance Studies. His other books in English include The Cheese and the Worms , No Island Is an Island: Four Glances at English Literature in a World Perspective, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches'Sabbath and The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.