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Article: "The frayed trope of rome": poetic architecture in Robert Duncan, Ronald Johnson, and Lisa Robertson.
- Article from:
- Mosaic (Winnipeg)
- Article date:
- December 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 University of Manitoba, Mosaic. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This paper argues that literary architecture gives expression to poetry's social and utopian desires and that, in this, the architectural rises above the metaphorical, becoming a central aspect of twentieth-century avant-garde poetics and its attempts to embody public space.
Recently I had the pleasure of viewing Giovanno Battista Piranesi's Carceri etchings at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A "poetic fantasy" of an impossible (dystopic) architecture, the etchings depict a massively complex and labyrinthine prison, complete with underworld shadows populated by Dantean shades and an Escher-like maze of stairways and drawbridges. It is not certain what purposes ...