Academica Press, LLC

Art matters; art of knowledge/knowledge of art.

This is a survey of the philosophy of aesthetics that traces the development of the relationship between views of knowledge and views of art and how both fit into a cultural view over the course of different historical periods. Individual chapters are dedicated to the Ancient World, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Modern Era, the Romantic Era, and the 20th Century. The conclusion argues that art is a unique and deeply significant way of knowing the natural and human world. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Christopher Fry; a dramatic reassessment of the Fry/Eliot era of British verse drama.

Jessup, who is an active stage director as well as a poet, contends that Fry (1907-2005) stands squarely in the mainstream of poetic drama that stretches from Shakespeare to Beckett, that the genre found its apotheosis in Marlow's Doctor Faustus, and that the essence of poetic drama is a belief in sacramental time in which now is always. Fry's plays, therefore, can be judged by how close they come to the ideal epitomized by Faustus, or how far short they fall. Among his topics are the history of poetic drama and Fry, the heretic and the churchman, Fry's Moses and the Bible's Moses, his last play, style in earlier and later plays, and Fry and Eliot as the spark and the stone. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The unobtrusive Miss Hawker; the life and works of Lanoe Falconer, late Victorian novelist and short story writer, 1848-1908.

This is not a full biography, warns Rowland, because not enough is yet known publicly about the life of Mary Elizabeth Hawker, who enjoyed considerable fame under her pen name Lanoe Falconer. It is a beginning, however, and intended to accompany a forthcoming volume of her short stories, Collected Tales. Among the aspects of her life that he does discuss are the Scottish connection, joy relatively unconfined, authors at work, the success and aftermath of Mademoiselle Ixe, deepening shadows, and the last effort. (Annotation ©2009 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)