Lethe
Subtitle: the art and critique of forgetting
By: Harald Weinrich ; translated from the German by Steven Rendall
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 254
Subjects: Memory (Philosophy); Memory in literature
Work titles: Lethe.
Description: "Lethe is an exploration of the art of forgetting - as the counterpart of the rhetorical art of memory - in Western culture from the Greeks to the present. It offers analyses of works by, among others, Augustine, Bellow, Borges, Casanova, Celan, Cervantes, Dante, Descartes, Freud, Goethe, Homer, Kant, Kleist, Levi, Locke, Mallarme, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Ovid, Pirandello, Plato, Proust, Rabelais, Rousseau, Sartre, and Wiesel. What emerges is a general view of forgetting that combines a recognition of its necessity and inevitability with a critique of forgetting (particularly in the case of the Holocaust) and the need to combat it.

Harald Weinrich's epilogue considers forgetting in the present age of information overflow, particularly in the area of the natural sciences."--Jacket.
Notes: "German edition, Lethe: Kunst und Kritik des Vergessens, c1997 by C.H. Beck, Munich"--T.p. verso

Includes bibliographical references (p. [245]-248) and index