Unimaginable: What We Imagine and What We Can't

ISBN-13: 9781784537579 / Angielski / Twarda / 2018 / 264 str.

Graham Ward

Opis

What we imagine can crush us or create us, destroy us or heal us; it can pitch us into battles with demons or set us among the songs of angels. It has roots beneath consciousness and is expressed in moods, rhythms, tones and textures of experience that are as much mental as physiological. In his new book, a sequel to the earlier Unbelievable, one of Britain's most exciting writers on religion presents a nuanced and many-dimensional portrait of the mystery and creativity of the human imagination. Discussing the likes of William Wordsworth, William Turner, Samuel Palmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, so as to assess the true meanings of originality and memory, and drawing on his own rich encounters with belief, Graham Ward asks why it is that the imagination is so fundamental to who and what we are. Using metaphor and story to unpeel the hidden motivations and architecture of the mind, the author grapples with profound questions of ultimacy and transcendence. He reveals that, in understanding what it really means to be human, what cannot be imagined invariably means as much as what can.

Recenzje

'Unimaginable is a book of wonders. It is an interdisciplinary excavation of imagination, its "palaeontology, archaeology, biology, physiology, psychology. and how it engages with the world". Yet it is far more than this: it is an exploration of language and art, of life itself, through enchanted prose and a weaving together of ideas, layers and cultures - "the stark, ungraspable beauty; the raw, defenceless horror," - that makes for compulsive reading. Unimaginable is a unique and powerful contribution to our understanding. Not to be missed.' Maggie Ross, author of Silence: A User's Guide

Spis treści

Acknowledgements Introduction: Deep Dreaming PART ONE: ARCHAEOLOGIES I. Landscapes II. Palaeolithic Horizons PART TWO: ARCHITECTURES III. Imagination and Mental Life IV. Imagination and Memory V. Imagination and Dreams PART THREE: ENGAGEMENTS VI. Myth-Making VII. The Cultural Imagination VIII. The Social Imagination Ecce Homo Bibliography Index

O autorze

Graham Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford and a Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, UK.