Literature in Art Books

This is an interesting approach to the news as stories, and the role of mythology in journalism Lule observes "...storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human. We understand our lives and our world through story. Perhaps stories are so much a part of us because human life itself has the structure of story. Each of us has a central character. Each of us knows, better than we know anything, that life has a beginning, middle and end. We need stories because we are stories." He takes the position that "news stories offer sacred, societal narratives with shared values and beliefs, with lessons and themes, and with exemplary models that instruct and inform." Stories told by the media are used as examples which teach readers what are good and bad ways to behave. Good guys are lauded, "bad" guys are ripped apart. For his "data" Lule compares stories in the New York Times and other major papers. It is fascinating to see the differences, and to see, with his insightful narration, how, over time, the stories changed, and even, how the stories told by the Times actually changed the news itself, and affected how others reported on the actual events. Lule lists what he calls seven myths, which he says "appear frequently, if not daily, in the news. They are primordial stories that have guided human storytelling for ages. And they guide the news and stories of today." The myths are: The Victim, The Scapegoat, The Hero, The Good Mother, The Trickster, The Other World and The Flood. I found the book a fascinating read. I bought it because I thought I could learn better how the media thinks and digests news, so I could use this to my benefit in PR efforts I occasionally engage in. I was right. It will help. This would also be a great resource to any journalist who wants to learn how to tap further and deeper into the archetypal, mythical resonances in the hearts of readers. I'm in the process of organizing a conference, StoryCon, on the art and science of story. Jack Lule has agreed to be a participant at the meeting, along with story creation giants like Jim Bonnet, Chris Vogler, Syd Field, Lew Hunter, Linda Seger and many more.

It's actually a shame that this is published under an academic imprint (Guilford, which is a fantastic publisher) because the book will interest more than just academic readers. I bought copies for two author friends-- Stephen Larsen (Fire in the Mind, authorized biography of Joseph Campbell) and Thom Hartmann, (Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Prophet's Way, ADD a Different Perspective) and both gobbled this book up, telling me the next day they'd spent the evening with it.

Peggy Roalf knows exactly most people are going to think of when your title announces that your book in the "Looking at Paintings" series looks at "Dancers." That is why the cover of this book, written by ages 8-12, has a detail of "Two Dancers on the Stage," a 1874 painting by Edgar Degas. Of course the full painting is reproduced inside the book along with Degas' "The Dance Class." He is the only artist with two works in the book, but then Degas is the most famous artist when it comes to dancers in the history of art, so that is only fair.

The "Looking at Paintings" series presents the views of many different painters on a single subject. In "Dancers" young readers are taken on a personal gallery tour of nineteen favorite paintings of dancers, starting with the work of an unknown Roman artist from an ancient fresco to "Dance of Love" by the Peruvian painter Grimanesa Amoros. Include are looks at some of the more famous paintings involving dancing, such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder's "The Wedding Dance," George Catlin's "Bull Dance, Mandan O-Kee-Pa Ceremony," and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "Dancing at the 'Moulin de la Galette.'" Just as often the artist will be a familiar name, as with Peter Paul Rubens and Henri Matisse, but the work might not, as with "Peasant's Dance" and "The Dance," respectively. The same can be said for William Blake, Winslow Homer, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Seurat, and Thomas Hart Benton.

Roalf explains how each artist's vision and interpretation of the dance is unique, with Matisse, for example, expressing the powerful energy on a circle dance by using bold lines and brilliant colors. Meanwhile, Georges Seurat uses thousands of little dots of paint instead of brush strokes to create "The Can-Can." In the back of the book there is a combined Glossary and Index that helps readers learn the difference between arcylic paint, oil paint, tempera, and watercolor, and other key art terms. Roalf is not only a writer but also a painter and graphic designer, who has taught art to young people (and their parents) as part of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's Weekend Family Program. That means for those who are looking for a nice, fundamental introduction to the wonderful world of art appreciation, check out this volume and then the rest of the series.

Taking off from the theoretical grounding supplied by anthropology and iconography, this book explores how a range early modern practices (from dumb-shows, to dictionary use, to chronological charts--all of which are shown to have been informed and animated by the Art of Memory), figured and reconfigured a vision of living with death in early modern England. The Society for Emblem Studies Newsletter (January 2003) reported: "Future work on all such emblematic forms in Elizabethan and Jacobean culture will need to take account of [Engel's] latest study."

This slim volume of exquisite little critical essays is a gem of literary and aesthetic criticism. Bernheimer was dying of cancer when he composed these last pieces, and they were edited and published just after his death. But sickness and death are only marginally reflected in the essays: Bernheimer was an expert of comparative literature, and that is the locus of the book.

He is looking at the phenomenon of aesthetic Decadence which appeared in European literature c.1885-1905. One can argue that Decadence had earlier adumbrations in Poe, Baudelaire, Gautier, and the Goncourts, but their earlier efforts really saw fruition in the period known as the Fin de Siècle.

One can look at the table of contents to see Bernheimer's topics of Nietzsche, Flaubert, Zola, Huysmans, Freud, etc. But what I want to impart is the excellence of Bernheimer's critique: he has a firm handle on what's become known as Postmodern criticism, but he's much more lucid than others who dabble in the genre. He writes a very nice English: he constructs very pellucid texts with lovely language--vocabulary, syntax, and punctuation. And his vision is very clear: he understands what he sees, and he is able to clearly formulate his vision to relate it Au lecteur (to the Reader) in such a manner as to make it easily apprehendable--something too often lacking in Postmodern criticism. Highly recommended for students and scholars of turn-of-the-century literature, culture, and intellectual history.

I really enjoyed this book! Very insightful about the types of young adult literature directed at girls in the past ten years. Covers all genres and topics,very helpful in teaching YA fiction. Highly reccomended!

This book aims at joy--nothing else. Joy is intensified in the despair of (post)modern life. Leithart also neatly connects joy (think comedy) with the Trinity. Leithart aims to show eschatological moments within the Trinity. And if these moments take place within space-time, then this book also aims at eschatology. An eschatology of hope.

The short thesis of this book is that Western literature moves from Tragedy to Comedy and from Comedy to Deep Comedy.

Beginning with Tragedy:
The pivotal work of ancient history is Homer. The Iliad--here Leithat defies convential terms--is a tragedy. Good people (well, protagonists anyway) gone bad. It is hard to find a happy ending to this story. More importantly, such a framework tending toward despair is inherent in a pagan (greek) culture.

Western literature, then, while still pagan, tries to move towards Comedy. Of course, the Odessy has a happier ending than the Iliad. But it lacks the deep resorvoirs of the Christian story. Odesseus knows he will die. And having been to Tarturas, he knows it is better to remain alive.

But The Aeneid is happier, right? Well, kind of. Aeneus does build a mighty house, but only by toppling other houses. Aeneas brings the destruction of Troy with him to Carthage. Aeneas, despite great moments, turns Carthage, represented by the suicidal funeral pyres of Dido, into another Troy.

But something happens with the Western Story. Christ in a way takes the Platonic worldview and subverts it. This is Leithart's most brilliant moment in any of his books. He wrestles with the challenge given by postmodern philosopher Derrida: All literature (or story) must have a supplement to the Origin. But the supplement is almost always a degeneration of the Origin. This shows up in literature. The sons (Zeus and the gods) overthrow the fathers (Chronus and the Titans). Supplementation for Derrida--and the greeks--is violent.

Interestingly, there is no such thing as "origin" unless there is also a moment of "supplementation." Accordling (and contra to Plato), there is no such thing as pure origin, pure essence, or a pure stream. It is already supplemented. At this point Derrida, himself an unbeliever, comes very close to a dark Trinitarianism. He, like Athanasius, sees that there can be no Father without a Son. But Derrida prefers Hesiod (violence) to the Gospel of Jon (perichoreisis).

This is the eschatological moment in the Trinity, and in Western History. Unlike all of history before it, this time the Son does not violence the Father. Christ reveals the Father. Does the Father's will. Incarnates the Father's love.

Here is a Trinitarian argument for you: There can be no Father without the Son. But he has also been the Father for all eternity. Therefore, there must have been a Son for all eternity.

Deep Comedy:
The newly revealed (although ancient) Trinitarian theolgoy was a joyful theology. The Christian gospel--the Christian story--moves from "glory to glory" (1 Cor. 3). The end is always better than the beginning. The medieval romances, despite some lapses, are much happier than Homer. The Christian (medieval) world is thus supernaturalized. The Christian hero is thus an adventurer.

Conclusion:
This book may well be Leithart's best work. The chapter "Supplement at the Origin" may well be the best thing on trinitarian theology I have read. It is hard to say how much I recommend this work.

Philosopher Jenefer Robinson argues quite convincingly that emotional engagement is necessary for any meaningful understanding of certain genres of art, music, literature, and poetry. According to Robinson, just as individuals who lack emotional understanding display serious social deficits, those who apprehend emotionally charged works from a purely intellectual stance misunderstand the deeper message behind artistic creations. Without that visceral emotional component, we cannot fully apprehend the subtleties of many creative works.

She does a fine job of methodically laying out her argument. Her argument is threefold. From the audience's perspective, Robinson argues that we are naturally inclined to pay attention to things in the environment that may impact our interests, desires, fears, etc. Emotions, then, are bodily responses to the environment, which are either threatening or conducive to these interests.

However, the mechanism is more cyclical than linear in nature. For Robinson, emotions are processes. Non-cognitive appraisals of the environment are caused by "simple perceptions" as well as by complex thoughts and beliefs which, in turn, trigger physiological responses and vice versa.

Moreover, studies indicate that this mental/physiological cycle of responses can occur regardless of the fact that we are cognitively aware that the situation is fictitious. Thus, we can respond emotionally to a work of art because we are capable of vividly imagining emotion in fictitious situations where our interests are at stake. The value of this kind of interaction comes when we reflect upon these experiences and are able learn about the complexities of emotional life that go beyond what our limited vocabulary is capable of articulating.

Secondly, emotion is equally important for the creator of the work. Although Robinson is careful to say that her theory does not apply to certain genres, she nonetheless defends a "new Romantic theory of artistic expression," whereby artists express emotion through their work by way of a persona that experiences the emotion/s depicted in the piece. Building on her theory of emotion, Robinson argues that works of representational works "are able to express an emotion by articulating the way the world appears to a person in that emotional state" (Robinson, 2005, 275).

But this oversimplifies Robinson's argument. She fully recognizes that in many works of art, there are "layers of personae" that allow emotions to be expressed through fiction by way of narrators, via the way that narrators depict the characters, and through the self-expression of the characters themselves, while others--particularly conceptual pieces--resist application of her theory.

Finally, Robinson explores how the very structure of the medium, particularly in literature and music, guides the audience to certain emotional responses to developments in plot and character. The fourth part of the book is devoted entirely to an analysis of the role of emotion in music appreciation and will likely have both lovers of Brahms, as well as new comers to his works, revisiting these pieces, book in hand.

Lovers of Henry James' The Ambassadors, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Edith Wharton's The Reef, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Ian McEwan's Atonement, will enjoy seeing these works analyzed here and those not familiar with them will likely wish to read these works afterwards. Robinson provides especially vivid examples of literary works that lend credence to her argument. Although one wishes that there were more depictions of the visual arts, the one painting selected, a haunting landscape by Caspar David Friedrich, is an excellent choice.

My criticisms are few and relatively minor. While she is correct that many audience members may have felt angry at being manipulated into finding the shooting of a character "amusing," Robinson's brief assessment of Quentin Tarantino's film Pulp Fiction is a bit disappointing. Controversial and often cutting edge pieces, such as Pulp Fiction, frequently arouse ire and attention precisely because they express emotional incongruity in ways that challenge how we traditionally view and make sense out of such depictions. Robinson's quick disposal of the Tarantino example missed an excellent opportunity to discuss further the complexities of emotions that seem diametrically opposed, but that nonetheless exist simultaneously.

One also wishes that the attention paid to each of the arts was a bit more balanced in terms of length (e.g. painting is treated in five pages, sculpture and architecture are conflated into two pages, etc.) and, as such, these sections are less satisfying than the sections on literature and music.


These minor points notwithstanding, it is still a thought-provoking joy to read and would make excellent required reading in a classroom setting. Robinson deftly illustrates the historical landscape of aesthetic theory, and emotion theory from philosophical, psychological, behaviorist, and neuro-physiological perspectives, and the book is surprisingly ambitious in the sheer number of thinkers whose works are discussed over the course of the book. In addition, the book is well-organized with chapter conclusions that bring us back to the previous premises and conclusions and tie everything up to that point together. As a philosopher, free-lance artist, and former paraprofessional psychiatric social worker, I found Deeper Than Reason to be a well-balanced, careful analysis that is appealing on many levels. Robinson has written a fascinating study of the role of emotions in the arts that will be highly attractive to both serious students of philosophy, emotion theory and the arts, as well as educated lay persons. Her style is both economical and engaging and she has managed to articulate what many of us have already felt at an intuitive level; without emotional engagement, some works of art simply cannot be understood. As such, Deeper Than Reason is a welcome arrival on the landscape of the philosophy of art and emotion theory.

'Desert Father' by James Cowan is a both a book about transformation, and can itself cause a transformation. Cowan recounts in engaging prose the story of his journey in search of the spirit of Anthony, the patriarch of monks, and the first anchorite and hermit in the desert in Christian history. Anthony gave up the splendours of life in Egypt (which was, at his time, one of the most splendid places on earth to live), forsaking the Nile for the desert, and forsaking the customs and comforts of society for the solitary, mud-brick and cave existence of an ascetic.

Cowan traveled to the still-extant Monastery of St. Anthony, near Mount Colzim (for those looking on maps, it might also be spelled Kolzim or Al-Qalzam), where Anthony's later years were spent. There Cowan found several things, including a library of the early church fathers, and other monastics and anchorites who carry on the tradition of Anthony. The primary figure here is that of Lazarus, a Melbourne native who 'gave up the world' to become a new person in a cave dwelling near to Anthony's original enclosure. Cowan, also searching for his spiritual home, and also coming from Australia (an 'empty land', as Lazarus would describe it), found a natural affinity with Lazarus (a name with obvious resurrection implications).

Cowan recounts his journeys both of the mind and of the heart, and some of the body as well. He travels around the region to see where other ascetics lived, and journeys through literature to gain insights from figures such as Isaac of Nineveh, Abdisho Hazzaya, John Cassian, and others, including the 'Life of Anthony', penned by the great doctor of the church, Athanasius. Many of these figures concentrate less on church dogma and doctrine, and more on practice and understanding of life - Abdisho describes seven steps or conditions to spirituality, for instance, seeing the emulation and imitation of Christ as more important than philosophical ideas about the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection (and in this way anticipates such later mystical figures as Thomas a'Kempis, the author of 'The Cloud of Unknowing', and other such mystic leaders).

Cowan writes of the change in the world, stating that the long line of thinkers from Pythagoras through Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, and Zeno, down to Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, had finally become frayed. No one had yet been able to answer satisfactorily the question of Being. Instead it had been left to an unlettered carpenter from Nazareth to propound a new metaphysic and a new reason for living. Gone was the all-consuming drive for the 'good life'. Cowan states that Christ had changed all that; and the men of the Egyptian desert were the first to devise a Christ-like modus vivendi that broke with the classical model. No matter what might be said about the early Christian theologians as intellectual and spiritual pioneers - men such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, Jerome, Athanasius, and even Augustine - they were still classically motivated in their actions and still saw themselves as philosophers whose reputations were founded on the practice of dialectic. They were never able to formulate a genuine Christian lifestyle in the way that Anthony and his contemporaries effectively did. This lifestyle is more important to Anthony than rote recitation of creeds that can then be safely ignored the rest of the week.

This was a place of the heart, not of the head. Our Western culture is so fixated on the provable and the scientifically repeatable, but this is in fact nothing new. According to Cowan, shifting one's understanding from the head to the heart, relying on intuition as a means of perception, was a difficult transition to make. In just a few weeks, Cowan was beginning to get a glimpse into the interior life of such hermits as Anthony. However, there was much more to be learned. It is a life where the truth is ever present, but even here, truth can hide. But this is a proving ground of a sort, and a rare pearl at that. Cowan points out that the truth is that the monastery is a jewel in the crown of humanity's aspiration toward the infinite. In it one confronts not only that deep empathy we have with the things of the spirit but also aspects of ourselves. The monastery becomes a mirror; it reflects back at us all the contours of suffering and guilt that we think lies safely hidden from view.

Cowan has much description through the text, and applies it with great skill. He describes at one point that the language here is not of theology, but of poetry - this can also be said for Cowan's narrative at times. In describing Anthony's abode, he writes, 'His cell in the desert made of mud brick and palm leaves was part of the great human architecture of the spirit. He was not the only man to build his retreat among the dunes, nor will he be the last.... But he was one of the earliest to recognise that spirituality requires the whole man if it is to radiate and become as an inner light.' With regard to this later piece, Cowan states that Lazarus and other modern-day hermits are not looking to reinstitute the practice of the desert ascetic, but rather continuing a tradition in order to honour history - however, the modern world needs ascetics and ascetic practices of a different sort.

This is a wonderful book, moving in many ways, full of insight and wonder. It is one to be read slowly and savoured. Indeed, for part of the time that I was reading it, I was tempted to become one of the desert anchorites, isolated save for the work of the spirit and the reading of books. However, we each have a different call; my call can be shaped by the experience and teaching of the desert fathers past and present, but it is not necessary to duplicate their work.

A deep, insightful work.

To many folks, the study of Old English language and literature may seem dull, moribund, rarefied, and largely irrelevant-- a subject only of concern to concern only to musty old academics in the ivory tower. Frantzen doesn't (directly) try to argue against this perception-- instead, he tries to investigate *why* this perception exists. His answer is an insightful and eye-opening investigation into the relationship among scholarship, ideology, and cultural relevance.

Frantzen begins by providing a brief history of Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) scholarship from its origins in the 16th century to the present day. From the beginning, he observes, the study of Old English and of texts written in it has been motivated by ideological (i.e. political) concerns. It began in the 16th century as part of a conscious effort to find medieval evidence for the existence of an independent English Church prior to the Norman Conquest, as a way of finding historical grounds for justifying the English Reformation. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the study of Anglo-Saxon texts took on a slightly different political agenda, as political theoriests and speechmakers (on both sides of the Atlantic-- Thomas Jefferson was, in fact, a quite knowledgeable amateur scholar of Anglo-Saxon) sought to make claims about precedent, legitimacy, and the rights of the 'free-born Englishman' being rooted in the earliest origins of English, and by extension, Anglo-Saxon, political culture. In the 19th century, the study of Anglo-Saxon became connected to a kind of nationalism that saw the Anglo-Saxon past as a kind of childhood of the modern English nation. This nationalism was sometimes (but not always) connected to a historico-racial view of nationality and identity, which suggested that anyone of English ancestry ought to revere Anglo-Saxon and its literary monuments, as they were the creations of their great forefathers. In all these cases, a desire to discover, posit, or identify in the Anglo-Saxon past some sort of origins (religious, political, linguistic, ancestral, etc.) that were of current ideological concern provided a powerful motivating force for the study of Anglo-Saxon and made Anglo-Saxon scholarship seem relevant.

Then we turn to the 20th century.... and more particularly to its last few decades. According to Frantzen, the main reason Anglo-Saxon scholarship today is a bit musty is become detached from these big political contraversies. The reason is that it is perceived as esoteric and irrelevant, Frantzen suggests, is that in many ways, it genuinely has become so from an ideological point of view. People no longer study Anglo Saxon because they are concerned with establishing on a firm foundation, the history of the English Church, or in debating whether there is medieval precedent for radical constitutional changes in England or America, or out of a firm belief that our own origins as a people and a nation (whoever "we" actually are) can be found among the Anglo-Saxons. Nor does it seem likely that any new political contraversies are likely to come along that will suddenly re-invest Anglo-Saxon studies with ideological relevance (and given our current suspicion to ideologically-motivated knowledge, it's not clear whether this would work, even if one were to come along).

So, this then leaves a question as to what the future of Anglo-Saxon studies is. Is it doomed to remain in its current, perceivedly marginal relevance? Or might there be some way to reinvigorate it-- to emphasize its relevance in a new, non-ideological way? Frantzen thinks so, and in the latter half of the book, he offers some of his suggestions as to how this might be done. As often happens in books that begin with an analysis/critique and then proceed to offer solutions, it turns out that his proposed solutions aren't nearly as convincing as the analysis. Put briefly, I'm not entirely convinced that the new approaches to teaching the Anglo-Saxon tradition that he suggestes will 'save' Anglo-Saxon scholarship, as it were. That's not to say that I don't think Anglo-Saxon studies half any future (or still less that I think they shouldn't). However, if Frantzen is right about the ideological importance that Old English scholarship has played since its inception (and I'm persuaded he is), and he's right about its current state being a product of decreased ideological relevance, then I'm just skeptical as to whether that can really be changed.

All in all this is an insightful book that will be of interest to those who study the middle ages, language origins, or Anglo-Saxon England-- either professionally or out of curiosity. Those who have no interest in such subjects, however, can give this a pass.

The Detective As Historian: History And Art In Historical Crime Fiction is a fascinating and informative compendium of twenty-five essays which analyze and evaluate examples of crime fiction ranging throughout recorded history from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, to medieval Europe, to 19th century England and America. A unique, scholarly, thought provoking, and welcome addition to literary studies in general, and detective story enthusiast's reading lists in particular, The Detective As Historian is a very highly recommended acquisition for both academic and community library collections.