Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1956. In Ishmael, Professor James Baird responds to the increasing secularization of Western civilization and the creation of what he calls authentic primitivism. For Baird, the aesthetic austerity of Protestantism undermined the structure of symbols created by Catholicism. In the absence of a meaningful structure of cultural authority in Western civilization, primary art took on a quasi-religious role by connecting humans to a transcendent being. Ishmael describes a new system of art, beginning around 1850, that supplanted Christian symbolism. Baird examines writers who helped to create a modern authentic primitivism, with emphasis on Herman Melville, whom Baird sees as a locus of change for the cultural significance of primary art. Baird provides a social history and biography of writers who participated in the primary art movement from 1850 to 1950
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Acknowledgements
A Note on Documentation and Translation
Part I. The Nature of Recent Primitivism
Chapter 1. Primitivism and Cultural Failure
Chapter 2. Perdita: The volcanic Center
Part II. Ishmael: The Westward Mariner
Chapter 3. Melville's Pacific Voyages: An Evaluation
Chapter 4. The Perpetuity of Ishmael
Part III. Avatars: Symbols of Reincarnation from the Orient
Chapter 5. Obsession with the Primeval East
Chapter 6. Puer Aeternus: Eternal Innocence
Chapter 7. Polynesian Ethos
Chapter 8. Whiteness
Chapter 9. Shadows and Erotic Symbols
Chapter 10. Tree and Cross
Chapter 11. The Dragon Whale
Part IV. Images from the Urwelt: The World Before Civilization
Chapter 12. The Sea and Aqueous Images
Chapter 13. Original Nature
Part V. Entombment: Christianity Revisited
Chapter 14. The Infernal City
Chapter 15. The Holy Sepulchre
Index
