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This is an account of the roles of local and national movements, and of memory and regret in the destruction or preservation of the architectural, artistic, and historic legacy of Europe in which the author examines what is cultural heritage and why it matters.

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Destruction and Preservation: Continuities and Discontinuities Destruction: Idolatry Destruction: Iconoclasm and Destruction in Northern Europe In Defense of Images: Christian Church and Religious Art From Local Culture to World Heritage: CÇrdoba Mosque/Cathedral York Minster: From Local to National Preservation Making the French Nation: Liberating France, Abba Gragoire, and the Patrimony of the Middle Ages Victor Hugo´s Notre-Dame de Paris The Turn to National Heritage: Nineteenth-Century Europe and Restoration Conclusion Memory, Regret, and History What is Cultural Heritage and Why does it Matter?

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"Reading Schildgen´s new book is a remarkable experience. She takes us from the toppling of the statue of Saddam in modern day Iraq and the destruction of the Valley of the Buddhas in Afghanistan, to Reformation England and medieval Byzantium, from UNESCO to the Bible, demonstrating how complicated and conflicted our instincts are to preserve or to destroy the symbols of our built environment." - John M. Ganim, President, New Chaucer Society and Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

"This is in so many ways a monumental undertaking - quite literally about monuments, of course, but also massive in its intellectual and historical reach as well as in its implications. She looks at iconoclasm in a variety of its manifestations - from medieval Byzantium, to seventeenth-century Protestant "Reformations", to late eighteenth-century French revolutionary atheism, to twentieth-century Stalinist purges of Russian orthodoxy. Schildgen brings this historical swing between destruction and preservation up to date with our contemporary scene." - Peter Hawkins, Professor of Religion, Boston University

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BRENDA DEEN SCHILDGEN is Professor of Comparative Literature at University of California, Davis, USA.

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