[PDF] The Restorative Poetics of a Geological Age: Stifter, Viollet-le-Duc, and the Aesthetic Practices of Geohistoricism

This book examines two mid-nineteenth century thinkers ? the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter and the French architect Eug?ne E. Viollet-le-Duc ? who imagined cultural history on the model of earth history: as a history of objects to be restored and worlds to be reconstructed. The nascent field of geology shaped cultural thought; their conservationism, informed by erosion, envisions a future of restorative renewal.