Forms of Attention (The Wellek Library lectures at the University of California, Irvine)
Forms of Attention (The Wellek Library lectures at the University of California, Irvine) by Frank Kermode
English | 1985 | ISBN: 0226431681 | 128 Pages | PDF | 5.04 MB
English | 1985 | ISBN: 0226431681 | 128 Pages | PDF | 5.04 MB
Sir Frank Kermode, the British scholar, instructor, and author, was an inspired critic."Forms of Attention" is based on a series of three lectures he gave on canon formation, or how we choose what art to value. The essay on Botticelli traces the artist s sudden popularity in the nineteenth century for reasons that have more to do with poetry than painting. In the second essay, Kermode reads Hamlet from a very modern angle, offering a useful (and playful) perspective for a contemporary audience. The final essay is a defense of literary criticism as a process and conversation that, while often conflating knowledge with opinion, keeps us reading great art and working with and for literature. Kermode s volume has the virtue of a lecturer s accessible style designed for a listening audience. It is also self-consciously spare of naked criticism. There is, nonetheless, an abundance of learned commentary, steady substance, and unveiled critical excellence. Which is to say the volume is a useful and engaging reflection of its learned author. "London Review of Books"