The Poetics of Ruins in Renaissance Literature - (Verbal Arts: Studies in Poetics) by Andrew Hui (Paperback)

About the Book

The book argues that the Renaissance was the Ruin-naissance, the birth of the ruin as category of discourse that inspired voluminous poetic production. By examining Petrarch, Du Bellay, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Spenser, and Shakespeare, Hui explains how writers used the ruin to think about their relationship to classical antiquity.

Book Synopsis

The Renaissance was the Ruin-naissance, the birth of the ruin as a distinct category of cultural discourse, one that inspired voluminous poetic production. For humanists, the ruin became the material sign that marked the rupture between themselves and classical antiquity. In the first full-length book to document this cultural phenomenon, Andrew Hui explains how the invention of the ruin propelled poets into creating works that were self-aware of their absorption of the past as well as their own survival in the future.

Review Quotes

Written with a lucid, elegant sensibility and profound erudition, this study interprets anew the shifts in meaning and value of ruins from classical Latin, to the Romance languages, to English lyrics. At the heart of his analysis Hui uncovers and probes the central problems raised by thinkers on the archeology of ruins: the inner relation between literature and ruins, the ethics of finitude they embody, their future, and the place of ruins at the new beginnings of history. My mind expands as I read it, and I can easily predict others will respond the same way.---Giuseppe Mazzotta, Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian, Yale University

...Hui urges us to consider how the study of Renaissance poetics--conceived not as the exploration of Europe's cultural figura but its ruins--might be a global, transgenerational, transnational field of study. Future multi-author monographs should follow this example.-- "The Spenser Review"

[Hui] deserves praise for having restricted the number of examples he gives to support his thesis, while at the same time not limiting himself to only one cultural realm. In this way, he sets an example for a type of Renaissance studies that bridges both temporal and linguistic divides, just as ruins do.-- "Bryn Mawr Classical Review"

The value of Hui's study is that it treats the core driving forces of European Renaissance poetry as a cohesive phenomenon... Given the immense erudition that this young author displays in his first book, coupled with the enthusiasm patent in his vibrant style, in coming years we may expect from him contributions to literary scholarship of the highest distinction.-- "Modern Language Quarterly"

This is a deeply learned and beautiful book.-- "SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900"

About the Author

Andrew Hui is Assistant Professor of Humanities at Yale-NUS College, Singapore.