History Of The Imagination

Download or read book Imagination written by John Cocking and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-11 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins, nature, function and effects of imagination have engrossed writers, theologians, philosophers and practitioners of the arts across the ages; its influence on painting and music continues to be debated. It has been simultaneously feared as a dangerous, uncontrollable force and revered as the supreme visionary power. Cocking's Imagination is an exploration of the history of imagination from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book opens with a treatment of imagination in the writings of Aristotle and Plato. Developments in the Middle Ages are traced, with particular attention to the parallel tradition in Islamic thought of the period and the book pursues the concept through the theories of Dante and the Neo-platonists to the High Renaissance. The manuscript was left unfinished on Professor Cocking's death in 1986 and has been edited by Penelope Murray, who adds an introductory essay. The book will be of particular value as a background to the explosion of interest in the imagination in the Romantic period.

Download or read book Historical Imagination written by David J. Staley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-27 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historical Imagination examines the threshold between what historians consider to be proper, imagination-free history and the malpractice of excessive imagination, asking where the boundary between the two sits and the limits of permitted imagination for the historian. We use "imagination" to refer to a mental skill that encompasses two different tasks: the reconstruction of previously experienced parts of the world and the creation of new objects and experiences with no direct connection to the actual world. In history, imagination means using the mind's eye to picture both the actual and inactual at the same time. All historical works employ at least some creative imagination, but an excess is considered "too much". Under what circumstances are historians permitted to cross this boundary into creative imagination and how far can they go? Supporting theory with relatable examples, Staley shows how historical works are a complex combination of mimetic and creative imagination and offers a heuristic for assessing this ratio in any work of history. Setting out complex theoretical concepts in an accessible and understandable manner and encouraging the reader to consider both the nature and limits of historical imagination, this is an ideal volume for students and scholars of the philosophy of history.

Download or read book More Than Real written by David Shulman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the imagination came to be recognized in South Indian culture as the defining feature of human beings. Shulman elucidates the distinctiveness of South Indian theories of the imagination and shows how they differ radically from Western notions of reality and models of the mind.

Download or read book The Modernist Imagination written by Martin Jay and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some of the most exciting and innovative work in the humanities is occurring at the intersection of intellectual history and critical theory. This volume includes work from some of the most prominent contemporary scholars in the humanities.

Download or read book Reason and Imagination written by Joseph Anthony Mazzeo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1962, Reason and Imagination presents collection of fourteen essays dedicated to Marjorie Hope Nicholson and is divided equally between works of her colleagues and of her former students. It contains themes like noble numbers and poetry of devotion, Cromwell as Davidic King, the isolation of the renaissances hero, Milton’s dialogue on Astronomy, music, mirth and galenic traditions in England, the Augustan conception of history, Locke and Sterne, and literary criticism and artistic interpretation, to weave a narrative of the history of ideas in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of literary history, philosophy, comparative literature, and English literature in general.

Download or read book The Medieval Imagination written by Jacques Le Goff and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-12-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To write this history of the imagination, Le Goff has recreated the mental structures of medieval men and women by analyzing the images of man as microcosm and the Church as mystical body; the symbols of power such as flags and oriflammes; and the contradictory world of dreams, marvels, devils, and wild forests. "Le Goff is one of the most distinguished of the French medieval historians of his generation . . . he has exercised immense influence."—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books "The whole book turns on a fascinating blend of the brutally materialistic and the generously imaginative."—Tom Shippey, London Review of Books "The richness, imaginativeness and sheer learning of Le Goff's work . . . demand to be experienced."—M. T. Clanchy, Times Literary Supplement

Download or read book Understanding Imagination written by Dennis L Sepper and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 845 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses that imagination is as important to thinking and reasoning as it is to making and acting. By reexamining our philosophical and psychological heritage, it traces a framework, a conceptual topology, that underlies the most disparate theories: a framework that presents imagination as founded in the placement of appearances. It shows how this framework was progressively developed by thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant, and how it is reflected in more recent developments in theorists as different as Peirce, Saussure, Wittgenstein, Benjamin, and Bachelard. The conceptual topology of imagination incorporates logic, mathematics, and science as well as production, play, and art. Recognizing this topology can move us past the confusions to a unifying view of imagination for the future. ​