Many dedicated readers, who are devoted to the life of the mind, understand that deep thought can be represented in literature. Angus Fletcher (http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?pid=183131649) shows here how thought gets expressed in the language of history writing, poetic writing, philosophical writing, and fiction writing.
Fletcher’s references are wide and rich. We are taken into the mind of Milton’s Satan; we share Marvell’s mysteriously haunting ‘green thought in a green shade’; we are immersed in the minds of the Old Testament writers, Herodotus, Giambattista Vico, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hart Crane, Italo Calvino and Wallace Stevens. Literature, poetry, film and music are all media in which thought is embedded and explored. A salient point of Fletcher is that thought does not have to be crystal clear to be meaningful. Unclear, vague and even irrational thinking bring ‘colors’ to the mind which carry deep and lasting influence in our lives. This is a marvellous book for anyone who has time for some ‘second order’ reading i.e. giving thought to the activity of reading itself.
Check if this well respected title on literary theory is in stock at your local library.
288 pages in Harvard University Press
First published 1991
ISBN 978-0674334137
Angus Fletcher