Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 824
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-0-8476-7776-4 • Paperback • March 1993 • $153.00 • (£119.00)
978-1-4616-4611-2 • eBook • March 1993 • $145.00 • (£112.00)
Eva T.H. Brann is the dean of St. John's College in Maryland.
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Philosophy: The Nature of the Imagination
Chapter 1: Ancient Writers
Chapter 2: Medieval Writers
Chapter 3: Modern Writers
Chapter 4: Twentieth-Century Writers (with Debates and Developments)
Chapter 5: Conclusions: Why an Image-Forming Imagination Should, After All, Be Affirmed
Part II: Psychology: The Having of Imagery
Chapter 1: Cognitive Science: The Setting of Imagery-Investigations
Chapter 2: The Science of Mental Imagery: Cognitive Psychology
Chapter 3: The Science of Memory: Storage and Retrieval of Visual Imagery
Chapter 4: Children’s Imagery
Chapter 5: Various Imagery-Topics
Chapter 6: The Organs of the Imagination: Eye and Brain
Part III: Logic: The Being of Images
Chapter 1: Real Images: Real Depictions of Real Objects
Chapter 2: Mental Images: Unreal Pictures of Real Objects
Chapter 3: Imaginary Images: Unreal Pictures of Unreal Objects
Part IV: Literature: The Translation of Imagining
Chapter 1: Visions into Words and Words into Vision
Chapter 2: Literary Creation: Imagining Apotheosized
Chapter 3: Literary Language: Two Figures of Speech
Chapter 4: Literary Imagining: Two Genres of Fiction
Part V: Depiction: The Theater of Imagining
Chapter 1: The Space of Imagining
Chapter 2: Thoughtful Space: The Geometry of Imagining
Chapter 3: Aesthetic Space: Pictures and Paintings
Part VI: The Worldly Imagination: Imaginary and Imaginative Visions
Chapter 1: Theology: Contrary Estimations of the Imagination
Chapter 2: No-Places and Past Times: Imaginary Worlds
Chapter 3: Places and Passions: The Imaginative World
Conclusion: Imaginative Projection and Thoughtful Penetration: Transparence and Transcendence
Coda: The Life of the Imagination
Index
A model of organization.
— New Vico Studies
Its scope is breathtaking, and its argument brilliant. . . . Readers will be seduced into delightful engagement and will emerge enlightened, enlarged, and refreshed. . . . Brann not only writes about meditation, she is herself a wise and skillful mediator between the reader and the world of imagination. Her book is a monumental contribution to scholarship.
— Christianity and Literature
This book is at once the most definitive and the most comprehensive book of its kind ever written. For anyone who wants to know how imagination has been regarded in Western philosophical and psychological, literary, and religious thought, this text is an indispensable resource, a treasure-trove of insight and knowledge.
— Review of Metaphysics
A splendid achievement, a life's work...a monumental contribution to scholarship.
— Jonathan Imber, Wellesley College
A scholarly and literary achievement of major proportions. . . . vintage work, the sort of even-handed and tempered scholarship we have come to expect from [Brann]. . . . The bibliographies at the end of each chapter (25 in all) are enough to astound any reader. The scope of this study and the detail of the investigation are truly remarkable. . . . Brann's book is a
— WORLD
Brann . . . provides a work of astounding amplitude. She is, throughout, perspicacious, erudite, clear, down to earth, crisp, and lively, and she is not afraid to take firm, definite, and sometimes controversial positions. Although there are myriad works on the imagination, there are not any that approach Brann's book in its encyclopedic and insightful coverage. This book will be, for many years to come, the main source for any work on the imagination. It should be in every college and public library.
— Choice Reviews
Eva Brann's book is a very instructive and recommendable interdisciplinary inquiry into the multiple aspects of imagination in the domain of the humanities.
— Utopian Studies Interdi