Description
Book SynopsisThis is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R. G. Collingwood on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the centre of the book are six chapters of a study of folktale and magic, composed by Collingwood in the mid-1930s and intended for development into a book. Here Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in the long-term evolution of human society and culture. This is preceded, in Part I, by a range of contextualizing material on such topics as the relations between music and poetry, the nature of language, the value of Jane Austen''s novels, the philosophy of art, and the relations between aesthetic theory and artistic practice. Part III of the volume consists of two essays, one on the relationship between art and mechanized civilization, and the second, written in 1931, on the collapse of human values and civilization l
Trade ReviewReview from previous edition The appearance in print in a scholarly and scrupulously edited form of Collingwood's folktale manuscript is very much to be welcomed as something of an event in Collingwood studies. The editors have done a superb job in presenting the folktale manuscript in a highly accessible form and in linking it with a number of other previously unpublished manuscripts and papers on broadly connected themes. * Peter Johnson, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION ; The Re-Enactment of Self: Perspectives from Literature, Criticism, and Culture ; A Fieldworker's Philosopher: Perspectives from Anthropology ; In Defence of Collingwood: Perspectives from Philosophy and the History of Ideas ; PART I: ART AND CULTURE ; 1. Words and Tune ; 2. Observations on Language ; 3. Jane Austen (1921) ; 4. Jane Austen (?1934) ; 5. The Philosophy of Art ; 6. Aesthetic Theory and Artistic Practice ; PART II: TALES OF ENCHANTMENT ; 7. Fairy Tales ; 8. Three Methods of Approach: Philological, Functional, Psychological ; 9. The Historical Method ; 10. Magic ; 11. Excavating Cinderella and King Lear ; 12. The Authorship of Fairy-Tales ; Addenda to the Folktale Manuscript ; PART III: THE MODERN UNEASE ; 13. Art and the Machine ; 14. Man Goes Mad
