Art and Enchantment: How Wonder Works - Paperback

by Patrick Curry (Author)

This book concerns the experience of enchantment in art. Considering the essential characteristics, dynamics and conditions of the experience of enchantment in relation to art, including liminality, it offers studies of different kinds of artistic experience and activity, including painting, music, fiction and poetry, before exploring the possibility of a life oriented to enchantment as the activity of art itself. With attention to the complex relationship between wonder in art and the programmatic disenchantment to which it is often subject, the author draws on the thought of a diverse range of philosophers, sociological theorists and artists, to offer an understanding of art through the idea of enchantment, and enchantment through art. An accessible study, richly illustrated with experience - both that of the author and others - Art and Enchantment will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and anyone with interests in the nature of aesthetic experience.

Author Biography

Patrick Curry is a tutor in the School of Environment, Archaeology, History and Anthropology at the University of Wales Trinity St David, UK. He is the author of Ecological Ethics: An Introduction and Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life, and the editor of Divination: Perspectives for a New Millennium. He is also editor-in-chief of the online journal The Ecological Citizen.