Nymphs - Giorgio Agamben

In 1900, art historians Andr Jolles and Aby Warburg
constructed an experimental dialogue in which Jolles supposed he had
fallen in love with the figure of a young woman in a painting: "A
fantastic figure-shall I call her a servant girl, or rather a classical
nymph?what is the meaning of it all?Who is the nymph? Where does she
come from?"Warburg's response: "in essence she is an elemental spirit, a
pagan goddess in exile," serves as the touchstone for this wide-ranging and theoretical exploration of female representation in iconography.

In Nymphs,
the newest translation of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's work,
the author notes that academic research has lingered on the "pagan
goddess," while the concept of "elemental spirit," ignored by scholars,
is vital to the history of iconography. Tracing the genealogy of this
idea, Agamben goes on to examine subjects as diverse as the aesthetic
theories of choreographer Domineco da Piacenza, Friedrich Theodor
Vischer's essay on the "symbol," Walter Benjamin's concept of the
dialectic image, and the bizarre discoveries of photographer Nathan
Lerner in 1972. From these investigations, there emerges a startlingly
original exploration of the ideas of time and the image.

Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and works have a broad appeal across many fields, and Nymphs
will engage not only the author's devoted fans in philosophy, legal
theory, sociology, and literary criticism, but his growing audience
among art theorists and historians as well.