Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Muses of One Mind

Muses of One Mind

Trimpi, Wesley

Paperback

Black American StudiesGeneral Sociology

Publisher Price: $52.00

ISBN10: 1608991555
ISBN13: 9781608991556
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
Published: Nov 1 2009
Pages: 434
Weight: 1.30
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.90 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
Describing how ancient discussions of literature borrowed their descriptive terms from mathematical, philosophical, and rhetorical disciplines, Wesley Trimpi shows that when any one of these three types of discourse was sacrificed to one or both of the other two, the resulting imbalance proved destructive to literary discourse. Preoccupation with exhortatory (rhetorical) intention reduced literary works to displays of eloquence or ideology; preoccupation with cognitive (philosophical) intention led to didacticism; and preoccupation with formal (mathematical) excellence resulted in aesthetic expression for its own sake. In tracing the relationship of the three disciplines to literary discourse through the Middle Ages, this work diagnosis the increase of such reductive preoccupations after the Neoplatoic reconstruction of classical literary theory. Since 1600 these imbalances have continued to exist, obscured by proliferating and competing theories and methods of literary interpretation. Taking theoria in the ancient sense of inclusive observation, Professor Trimpi points to an alternative to contemporary critical orthodoxies.

Also in

General Sociology

View All