The Artist and Political VisionBenjamin R. Barber, Michael J. Gargas McGrath Transaction Publishers - 397 pages Art and politics are often regarded as denizens of different realms, but few artists have been comfortable with the notion of a purely aesthetic definition of art. The artist has a public and thus political vision of the world interpreted by his art no less than the statesman and the legislator have a creative vision of the world they wish to make. The sixteen original essays in this volume bear eloquent witness to this interpenetration of art and politics. Each confronts the intersection of the aesthetic and the social, each is concerned with the interface of poetic vision and political vision, of reflection and action. They take art in the broadest sense, ranging over poets, dramatists, novelists, essayists, and filmmakers. Their focus is on art and its political dilemmas, not simply on the artist. They consider the issues raised for politics and culture by alienation, violence, modernization, technology, democracy, progress, and revolution. And they debate the capacity of art to stimulate social change and incite revolution, the temptations of social control of culture and of political censorship, the uncertain relationship between art and history, the impact of economic structure on artistic creation and of economic class on artistic product, the common ground between art and legislation and between crea-tivitv and control. |
Contents
1 | |
Ethics and Politics in the PreNineteen Eighty | 15 |
The Absurdity of Politics | 87 |
The Political Imagination | 117 |
Passion and Politics | 145 |
Poetic Understanding and Comic Action | 165 |
Elizabethan Statecraft and Machiavellianism | 193 |
Political Development and the Aesthetic | 221 |
Natty Bumppo and the Godfather | 233 |
Billy Budd and the Context of Political Rule | 245 |
Technology Social Change | 267 |
Violence and the Novel | 291 |
Politics and Film | 317 |
The Critique of Liberal Democracy | 363 |
Contributors | 385 |
Other editions - View all
The Artist and Political Vision Benjamin R. Barber,Michael J. Gargas McGrath No preview available - 1982 |
Common terms and phrases
Absalom absurd action ambiguities American Andre Malraux argued artisans artist Athens Baudelaire Baudelaire's become Billy Budd Bottom boulevard Caligula Camus Capra's century character civilization Comintern communist Connecticut Yankee contemporary critics culture death democratic discontinuities drama dream essay feelings fiction Frohock Garine Garine's Glass Bead Game Grand Inquisitor Hank Hank's Hermann Hesse hero Hesse Hesse's human Ibid ideals imagination individual intellectual interpretation Joyce kill Le Corbusier Letter to D'Alembert literary literature live Machiavellian Malraux Marxism mass meaning Melville Melville's modern moral Morgan le Fay narrator Natty Bumppo nature nineteenth novel Orwell paradox Paris philosophy plague play poetic political problem reason rebellion revolution revolutionary Richard Richard III Rousseau San Manuel scene seems sense Shakespeare social society speech spiritual story theater theme Theseus thought tradition Trotsky Trotsky's Twain University Press urban utopian values Vere violence virtue vision writing York