Architecture and the Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi.

Architecture and TextAuthor: BLOOMER, Jennifer.

Yale University Press, 1993. 222 pages. Illustrated. Paperback.

In this profoundly original book, Jennifer Bloomer addresses important philosophical questions concerning the relation between writing and architecture. Drawing together two cultural fantasies from different periods–one literary and one architectural–Bloomer uses the allegorical strategies she finds in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to analyze three works of Giambattista Piranesi (Campo Marzio, Collegia, and the Carceri). Bloomer argues that architecture is a system of representation, with signifying possibilities that go beyond the merely symbolic.

ISBN: 0300063024