The past is a foreign country / David Lowenthal.
By: Lowenthal, David.
Material type: BookPublisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1985Description: xxvii, 489 p. : ill., ports. ; 25 cm. + pbk.ISBN: 0521224152 (cased); 0521294800 (v) (pbk) :.Subject(s): PastDDC classification: 155.92Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
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General Lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 155.92 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00005590 |
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Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
In this remarkably wide-ranging book Professor Lowenthal analyses the ever-changing role of the past in shaping our lives. A heritage at once nurturing and burdensome, the past allows us to make sense of the present whilst imposing powerful constraints upon the way that present develops. Some aspects of the past are celebrated, others expunged, as each generation reshapes its legacy in line with current needs. Drawing on all the arts, the humanities and the social sciences, the author uses sources as diverse as science fiction and psychoanalysis to examine how rebellion against inherited tradition has given rise to the modern cult of preservation and pervasive nostalgia. Profusely illustrated, The Past is a Foreign Country shows that although the past has ceased to be a sanction for inherited power or privilege, as a focus of personal and national identity and as a bulwark against massive and distressing change it remains as potent a force as ever in human affairs.
Bibliography: p413-470. - Includes index.
Table of contents provided by Syndetics
- List of illustrations
- Introduction
- Part I Wanting The Past
- 1 Reliving the past: dreams and nightmares
- 2 Benefits and burdens of the past
- 3 Ancients vs. moderns
- 4 The look of age
- Part II Knowing The Past
- 5 How we know the past
- Part III Changing The Past
- 6 Changing the past
- 7 Creative anachronism
- Bibliography and citation index
- General index