The Restorative Poetics of a Geological Age

This book examines two mid-nineteenth century thinkers the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter and the French architect Eugne 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.