Imagination: A Study in the History of Ideas - Hardcover

Cocking, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415058074 ISBN 13: 9780415058070

Publisher: Routledge, 1991

Synopsis

The origins, nature, function and effects of imagination have engrossed writers, theologians, philosophers and practitioners of the arts across the ages; its influence on painting and music continues to be debated. It has been simultaneously feared as a dangerous, uncontrollable force and revered as the supreme visionary power. Cocking's Imagination is an exploration of the history of imagination from antiquity to the Renaissance. The book opens with a treatment of imagination in the writings of Aristotle and Plato. Developments in the Middle Ages are traced, with particular attention to the parallel tradition in Islamic thought of the period and the book pursues the concept through the theories of Dante and the Neo-platonists to the High Renaissance. The manuscript was left unfinished on Professor Cocking's death in 1986 and has been edited by Penelope Murray, who adds an introductory essay. The book will be of particular value as a background to the explosion of interest in the imagination in the Romantic period.

About this title

About the Author

John Cocking, Penelope Murray

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415058074
• ISBN 13: 9780415058070
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 316
• Editor: Murray Penelope