Aesthetics

A pioneering exploration of the roots of our attitudes toward nature, Paul Shepard's most seminal work is as challenging and provocative today as when it first appeared in 1967. Man in the Landscape was among the first books of a new genre that has...

Mimesis is one of the oldest, most fundamental concepts in Western aesthetics. This book offers a new, searching treatment of its long history at the center of theories of representational art: above all, in the highly influential writings of Plato and...

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Software has replaced a diverse array of physical, mechanical, and electronic technologies used before 21st century...

"If our procedure is to work steadily in the direction of drawing as fine art, rather than (as we so often find) beginning from examples of such art, where shall we begin? One attractive possibility is to begin at the beginning-not the beginning in...

Jacques Derrida remains a leading voice of philosophy, his works still resonating today-and for more than three decades, one of the main sites of Derridean deconstruction has been the arts. Collecting nineteen texts spanning from 1979 to 2004, Thinking...

All too often, we think of our minds and bodies separately. The reality couldn't be more different: the fundamental fact about our mind is that it is embodied. We have a deep visceral, emotional, and qualitative relationship to the world-and any...

While narrative has been one of the liveliest and most productive areas of research in literary theory, discussions of the nature of emotional responses to art and of the cognitive value of art tend to concentrate almost exclusively on the problem of...

This volume is a fascinating introduction to the core themes and basic methods of aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Providing an analytic and historical treatment of the issues, and including many illustrative examples to both motivate and reinforce...

A renowned literary theorist reconsiders previous stances and offers his latest thinking on the nature of literature and literary study In this characteristically concise, witty, and lucid book, Terry Eagleton turns his attention to the questions we...

When our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that shape our self-identity. By analyzing social...

John Armitage and Joanne Roberts present a groundbreaking examination of the relations between historical and, crucially, contemporary ideas of luxury. This volume gives you a technocultural focus on aesthetic, design-led and media practice with key case...

A complete and original theory of aesthetics based on Marx and Althusser in the modernist Marxist tradition (Brecht, Althusser, Benjamin, Adorno). The main concepts that arise from this work are: the aesthetic level of practice, aesthetic state...

According to the literary humanist, works of imaginative literature have an objective meaning which is fixed at the time of their production and which is the same for all readers, then and thereafter, not subject to the vagaries of individual readers'...

A ground-breaking attempt at a prolegomenon to the study of style, this collection brings together eleven essays by distinguished philosophers, literary theorists, art historians, and musicologists, all addressing the role played by style in the arts and...

In Contingent Computation, M. Beatrice Fazi offers a new theoretical perspective through which we can engage philosophically with computing. The book proves that aesthetics is a viable mode of investigating contemporary computational systems. It does so...

This book offers a diverse understanding and practical approach towards the growing area of atmosphere research, in the context of philosophy, geography and architecture.It begins by tracing back to the model of experience called the "pathic". Drawing on...

In this acclaimed work, first published in 1986, world-renowned scholar Arthur C. Danto explored the inextricably linked but often misunderstood relationship between art and philosophy. In light of the book's impact-especially the essay "The End of Art,"...

The Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato has earned international acclaim for his analysis of contemporary capitalism, in particular his influential concept of immaterial labor and his perceptive writings on debt. In Videophilosophy, he reveals the...

The early medieval Scottish philosopher and theologian John Duns Scotus shook traditional doctrines of universality and particularity by arguing for a metaphysics of 'formal distinction'. Why did the nineteenth-century poet and self-styled philosopher...

The appreciation of nature and natural beauty demands our attention as environmental issues become ever more urgent. In this timely introduction, Glenn Parsons provides an overview of philosophical work on the aesthetics of nature, identifying key...

Shortly before his death in 2004, Jacques Derrida expressed two paradoxical convictions: he was certain that he would be forgotten the very day he died, yet at the same time certain that something of his work would survive in the cultural memory. This...

Werner Herzog has produced some of the most powerful, haunting, and memorable images ever captured on film. Both his fiction films and his documentaries address fundamental issues about nature, selfhood, and history in ways that engage with but also...

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Literature is an in-depth examination of literature through a philosophical lens, written by distinguished figures across the major divisions of philosophy. Its 40 newly-commissioned essays are divided into six...

Is there too much violence in hip-hop music? What's the difference between Kimberly Jones and the artist Lil' Kim? Is hip-hop culture a "black" thing? Is it okay for N.W.A. to call themselves niggaz and for Dave Chappelle to call everybody bitches? These...

With a critical eye, Gabriel Rockhill guides you through complex debates in history, politics and aesthetics, giving you an overview of key issues and central figures, including Foucault, Derrida, Castoriadis, Badiou and Ranciere. Rockhill also questions...

With the rise of review sites and social media, films today, as soon as they are shown, immediately become the topic of debates on their merits not only as entertainment, but also as serious forms of artistic expression. Philosopher Robert B. Pippin,...

Elaborating the history, variety, pervasiveness, and function of the adornments and ornaments with which we beautify ourselves, this book takes in human prehistory, ancient civilizations, hunter-foragers, and present-day industrial societies to tell a...

What contribution can the atmospherological approach make to the debate on collective feelings? In answering this question, the book provides a brief introduction to the so-called "atmospheric turn", examines the complex emotional "games" to which...

People engage with authored works all the time. They buy paintings, read books, download songs - they may even be artists themselves. Very rarely, however, is the concept of authorship brought into question. The basic idea that the artist as an...

From A New Hope to The Rise of Skywalker and beyond, this book offers the first complete assessment and philosophical exploration of the Star Wars universe. Lucasfilm examines the ways in which these iconic films were shaped by global cultural...

THE ART OF COMICS The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Introduction is the first-ever collection of essays published in English devoted to the philosophical questions raised by the art of comics. The volume, which includes a preface by the renowned comics...

John Russon draws from a broad range of art and literature to show how philosophy speaks to the most basic and important questions in our everyday lives. In Sites of Exposure, Russon grapples with how personal experiences such as growing up and...

Only since the Romantic period has art been understood in terms of an ineffable aesthetic quality of things like poems, paintings, and sculptures, and the art-maker as endowed with an inexplicable power of creation. From the Greeks to the 18th century,...

Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) was one of the world's most influential, celebrated and controversial thinkers. Originally published between 1968 and 2009, this collection of 25 pieces includes six interviews translated into English for the first time and a...

There Are No Such Things as Theories considers the fundamental question: what is a scientific theory? It presents a range of options - from theories are sets of propositions, to theories are families of models, abstract artefacts, or fictions - and...

Coming to Life: Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Mothering is a superlative collection of essays that does what too few scholarly works have dared: it takes seriously the philosophical significance of women's lived experience. Every woman,...

The Aesthetics of Human Environments is a companion volume to Carlson's and Berleant's The Aesthetics of Natural Environments. Whereas the earlier collection focused on the aesthetic appreciation of nature, The Aesthetics of Human Environments...

Within philosophy, a new interest in aesthetics beyond the arts has encouraged the rapid growth of environmental aesthetics. Within this literature, however, less attention has been given to the spaces and places that emerge from various nature-culture...

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature, and explores the distinction, if there is any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there any...

Boredom and Art examines the use of boredom as a strategy in modern and contemporary art to resist or frustrate the effects of consumerism and capitalism. This book traces the emergence of what Haladyn terms the will to boredom in which artists, writers...