Art and Enchantment: How Wonder Works

by Patrick Curry

This book concerns the experience of enchantment in art. Considering the essential characteristics, dynamics and conditions of the experience of enchantment in relation to art, including liminality, it offers studies of different kinds of artistic experience and activity, including painting, music, fiction and poetry, before exploring the possibility of a life oriented to enchantment as the activity of art itself. With attention to the complex relationship between wonder in art and the programmatic disenchantment to which it is often subject, the author draws on the thought of a diverse range of philosophers, sociological theorists and artists, to offer an understanding of art through the idea of enchantment, and enchantment through art. An accessible study, richly illustrated with experience – both that of the author and others – Art and Enchantment will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and anyone with interests in the nature of aesthetic experience.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

254 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2023

About the author

I hold a B.A. (University of California at Santa Cruz, 1978, in Psychology, with highest honours), M.Sc. (L.S.E., 1980, in Logic and Scientific Method), and Ph.D. (University College London, 1987, in the History and Philosophy of Science).

Since September 2006 I have been a Lecturer (0.5) in Religious Studies at the University of Kent (Canterbury), where I teach in the MA programme on the Cultural Study of Cosmology and Divination. From 2002-06 I was a Lecturer (0.5) at the Sophia Centre, Bath Spa University College, where I co-taught the MA in Cultural Astronomy and Astronomy.

I have reviewed books for History Today, New Statesman, The Guardian, The Independent and (most often) the Times Literary Supplement; appeared on two television programmes; and taken part in two programmes on BBC Radio Four. I also appear in interviews of two of the three extended New Line DVD’s on The Lord of the Rings.

My ongoing project (when I get time) concerns enchantment as a common but little-mentioned human experience – one which touches on and connects a wide range of strange bedfellows: nature, erotic communion, art, divination and spirituality. It is influenced by the work of Max Weber and succeeding critical theorists, as well as other writers such as as J.R.R. Tolkien, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, David Abram, Sean Kane, Val Plumwood, Bruno Latour and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. I am also very interested in related issues such as the nature of truth, metaphor, embodied phenomenology, pluralism and post-secularism.

Reviews

[Goatboy · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Sorry, really wanted to like this one as it was recommended by Weird Studies and I usually love all they suggest. But for me this one just got too bogged down with other writers' quotes about art and also pointing out what the author thought was not art worthy or promoting enchantment, too many of which I just found myself disagreeing on.

For those interested in this subject I highly recommend J.F. Martel's Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice which does a much better job of getting to the heart of the matter without all the bogging down.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...