Dreaming by the Book - Softcover

Scarry, Elaine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691070768 ISBN 13: 9780691070766

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Dreaming by the Book explores the almost miraculous processes by which poets and writers teach us the work of imaginative creation. Writers from Homer to Heaney instruct us in the art of mental composition, even as their poems progress. Just as painters understand paint, composers musical instruments, and sculptors stone or metal, verbal artists understand the only material in which their creations will get made--the back-lit tissue of the human brain. In her brilliant synthesis of literary criticism, philosophy, and cognitive psychology, Elaine Scarry explores the principal practices by which writers bring things to life for their readers.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Part reverie, part rhapsody, and lucid analysis throughout."--Robert Fagles, translator of Homer's Iliad

"I finished Dreaming by the Book feeling that fundamental aspects of the nature of consciousness had been peeled open and exposed to view."--Stephen M. Kosslyn, author of Image and Brain

About the Author:

Elaine Scarry is Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics at Harvard University. Her many writings include On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton) and The Body In Pain (1986).

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0691070768
• ISBN 13: 9780691070766
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304