Overview

This book establishes an argument for deeper attention to the aesthetic qualities of literature, to the question of the relation between the aesthetic and more immediate, practical, and urgent social and political matters. It attempts to establish the intrinsic value of the aesthetic at the same time as it demonstrates that focus on the aesthetic does not preclude attention of the urgent questions with which works of art consistently engaged. It argues that attention to the aesthetic does not diminish attention to these larger issues, but in effect increases the power both of art and criticism to engage them fruitfully.

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9780192844859

Table of Contents

Reviews

The variety of approaches and the high quality of the contributions make their own argument for the merit of engaging with the aesthetic. * Choice *

The variety of approaches and the high quality of the contributions make their own argument for the merit of engaging with the aesthetic. * Choice * Each author here is touched deeply by beauty, and I assume they inspire the experience in one student at a time. * Tony Schwab, The Victorian Web *

Author Information

George Levine is Emeritus Professor at Rutgers University. His work has focused on Victorian fiction, George Eliot, and Darwin and his relation to the novel and, more recently, on the relation of science to literature and aesthetics, and secularism.

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