Panaesthetics: On the Unity and Diversity of the Arts

by Daniel Albright

Overview

While comparative literature is a well-recognized field of study, the notion of comparative arts remains unfamiliar to many. In this fascinating book, Daniel Albright addresses the fundamental question of comparative arts: Are there many different arts, or is there one art which takes different forms? He considers various artistic media, especially literature, music, and painting, to discover which aspects of each medium are unique and which can be "translated” from one to another. Can a poem turn into a symphony, or a symphony into a painting?
 
Albright explores how different media interact, as in a drama, when speech, stage decor, and music are co-present, or in a musical composition that employs the collage method of the visual arts. Tracing arguments and questions about the relations among the arts from Aristotle’s Poetics to the present day, he illuminates the understudied discipline of comparative arts and urges new attention to its riches.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300187649
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/25/2014
Series:	The Anthony Hecht Lectures in the Humanities Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Daniel Albright is the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, and he teaches in the Comparative Literature, English, and Music departments. He is the author of sixteen previous books. He lives in Cambridge, MA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Mousike 1

Part 1 Individual Media

1 What Is Literature? 13

2 What Is Painting? 46

3 What Is Music? 149

Part 2 Art Rampant

4 Nine Definitions 209

5 Wonder and the Sublime 219

6 Pseudomorphoses 234

7 Comparative Arts: Two Conclusions 277

Notes 287

Index 301

Poetry Credits 321

Editorial Reviews

This marvelous book—an instant classic—excites, inspires, provokes, and (when provocation does not suit) gently coaxes the reader into accepting its claims. Albright has obviously mulled over the relationships among the literary, visual, and musical arts for many years, yet the result of his meditation is surprisingly fresh.”—Simon Morrison, Princeton University

Simon Morrison

In this dazzlingly wide-ranging book, Daniel Albright explores the specificities of literature, painting, and music. But far from seeing the arts as locked into their differences, he mounts a brilliant, intricate argument for their mutual translatability and ultimate unity.”— Jahan Ramazani, author of Poetry and Its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres

Jahan Ramazani

With astonishing range, quicksilver riffs, and aphorisms to die for, Daniel Albright creates nothing less than a pagan poetics for the modern age.  Panaesthetics is Pan’s aesthetic, an endlessly musical sensibility sublimely at home in a world where Art is everything and everything is Art.”— Scott Burnham, author of Mozart's Grace

Scott Burnham

In exploring whether there are many different arts, or if there is one that variously takes different forms, Daniel Albright brilliantly shows how the coming-together and splitting-asunder of artistic media is one of the great stories in the intellectual history of the West.”—Pamela Rosenberg, American Academy in Berlin

Pamela Rosenberg

Challenging and pleasurable . . . Albright’s affecting prose produces synaesthetic sensations in the reader . . . Albright posits a unique and complex theory . . . forging a new and unique form of art criticism in the process.”—Anna Gallagher-Ross, C Magazine

C Magazine - Anna Gallagher-Ross