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Colors of the Mind : Conjectures on Thinking in Literature / Angus Fletcher.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2013]Copyright date: ©1991Edition: Reprint 2013Description: 1 online resource (310 p.) : 1hContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674334137
  • 9780674334144
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 809/.93384
LOC classification:
  • PN49
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part I. Representing Thought -- 1. Iconographies of Thought -- 2. Two Frames in the Iconography of Thinking: The Satanic and the Quixotic -- 3. The Distractions of Wit in the English Renaissance -- 4. Standing, Waiting, and Traveling Light: Milton and the Drama of Information -- Part II. Representative Thinking -- 5. Allegorical Secrecy, Gnomic Obscurity -- 6. The Language-Game of Prophecy in Renaissance Poetics -- 7. The Father of Lies -- 8. Dipintura: The Visual Icon of Historicism in Vico -- 9. Threshold, Sequence, and Personification in Coleridge -- 10. Silence and the Voice of Thought -- 11. Music and the Code of the Ineffable: Visconti's Death in Venice -- 12. The Image of Lost Direction -- 13. Style and the Extreme Situation -- 14. Stevens and the Influential Gnome -- Notes -- Index
Summary: Angus Fletcher is one of our finest theorists of the arts, the heir to I. A. Richards, Erich Auerbach, Northrop Frye. This, his grandest book since the groundbreaking Allegory of 1964, aims to open another field of study: how thought--the act, the experience of thinking--is represented in literature. Recognizing that the field of formal philosophy is only one demonstration of the uses of thought, Fletcher looks for the ways other languages (and their framing forms) serve the purpose of certain thinking activities. What kinds of thinking accompany the writing of history? How does the gnomic sentence manage to represent some point of belief? The fresh insights Fletcher achieves at every turn suggest an anatomy of poetic and fictional strategies for representing thought--the hazards, the complications, the sufferings, the romance of thought. Fletcher's resources are large, and his step is sure. The reader samples his piercing vision of Milton's Satan, the original Thinker, leaving the pain of thinking as his legacy for mankind; Marvell's mysteriously haunting "green thought in a green shade"; Old Testament and Herodotus, Vico and Coleridge; Crane, Calvino, Stevens. Fletcher ranges over the heights of literature, poetry, music, and film, never losing sight of his central line of inquiry. He includes comments on the essential role of unclear, vague, and even irrational thinking to suggest that ideas often come alive as thoughts only in a process of considerable distress. In the end he gives us literature--not the content of thought, but its form, its shape, the fugitive colors taken on by the mind as represented in art.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674334144

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part I. Representing Thought -- 1. Iconographies of Thought -- 2. Two Frames in the Iconography of Thinking: The Satanic and the Quixotic -- 3. The Distractions of Wit in the English Renaissance -- 4. Standing, Waiting, and Traveling Light: Milton and the Drama of Information -- Part II. Representative Thinking -- 5. Allegorical Secrecy, Gnomic Obscurity -- 6. The Language-Game of Prophecy in Renaissance Poetics -- 7. The Father of Lies -- 8. Dipintura: The Visual Icon of Historicism in Vico -- 9. Threshold, Sequence, and Personification in Coleridge -- 10. Silence and the Voice of Thought -- 11. Music and the Code of the Ineffable: Visconti's Death in Venice -- 12. The Image of Lost Direction -- 13. Style and the Extreme Situation -- 14. Stevens and the Influential Gnome -- Notes -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Angus Fletcher is one of our finest theorists of the arts, the heir to I. A. Richards, Erich Auerbach, Northrop Frye. This, his grandest book since the groundbreaking Allegory of 1964, aims to open another field of study: how thought--the act, the experience of thinking--is represented in literature. Recognizing that the field of formal philosophy is only one demonstration of the uses of thought, Fletcher looks for the ways other languages (and their framing forms) serve the purpose of certain thinking activities. What kinds of thinking accompany the writing of history? How does the gnomic sentence manage to represent some point of belief? The fresh insights Fletcher achieves at every turn suggest an anatomy of poetic and fictional strategies for representing thought--the hazards, the complications, the sufferings, the romance of thought. Fletcher's resources are large, and his step is sure. The reader samples his piercing vision of Milton's Satan, the original Thinker, leaving the pain of thinking as his legacy for mankind; Marvell's mysteriously haunting "green thought in a green shade"; Old Testament and Herodotus, Vico and Coleridge; Crane, Calvino, Stevens. Fletcher ranges over the heights of literature, poetry, music, and film, never losing sight of his central line of inquiry. He includes comments on the essential role of unclear, vague, and even irrational thinking to suggest that ideas often come alive as thoughts only in a process of considerable distress. In the end he gives us literature--not the content of thought, but its form, its shape, the fugitive colors taken on by the mind as represented in art.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Nov 2021)