Abstract
One winter’s night, a few years ago, I was sitting in front of some programme or other on the television, too lazy or tired to do anything else. Yawning as yet another advert break interrupted my entertainment, I glanced idly to the left, at the mantelpiece above the unlit gas fire. I had seen it ten thousand times – without really seeing it – but on that night, I looked at it as if for the first time.
Thus the minuscule, a narrow gate, opens up an entire world. The details of a thing can be the sign of a new world which, like all worlds, contains the attributes of greatness.
(Bachelard 1994 [1958]: 155)
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© 2013 Rachel Hurdley
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Hurdley, R. (2013). Introduction: Dismantling Mantelpieces. In: Home, Materiality, Memory and Belonging. Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312952_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137312952_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31131-6
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