The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics - by Joseph J Tanke & Colin McQuillan (Paperback)

About the Book

Drawing from ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary sources, this textbook offers a comprehensive and systematic historical overview of aesthetic theory.

Book Synopsis

The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics provides teachers and students with a new perspective on the history and present of aesthetic theory. It contains a comprehensive survey of the field of aesthetics, with selections drawn from ancient, medieval, renaissance, modern, and contemporary sources. It provides readers with a radically new perspective on the genesis and development of aesthetic theory by including an expanded section on early modern aesthetics. The Anthology likewise pays special attention to the interdisciplinary nature of aesthetics, reconstructing some of the dialogues in literary theory and art criticism that gave rise to philosophy's more systematic efforts. It introduces readers to contemporary debates by including a number of thinkers not yet anthologized. It contextualizes these positions by situating them in terms of the history to which they are responding. In short, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Aesthetics brings course materials up-to-date with the state of the discipline.

Review Quotes

...the anthology is valuable; it not only presents a captivating account of the history of aesthetics, but also, as promised by the editors, 'redraws the picture of aesthetics' so that a richer landscape emerges. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty; general readers.
CHOICE

This ambitious anthology on the aesthetics of Bloomsbury editions will preferably to PhD students of English who are seeking various writings on art, in a decidedly philosophical perspective, which means highly distinct from the art history or sociology of art.
Symposium

About the Author

Joseph J. Tanke is based at the University of Hawaii. He has published and lectured extensively on issues in Continental philosophy, with a special emphasis on aesthetics and politics, as well as the works of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Rancière. Professor Tanke was recently named to the editorial board of Philosophy and Social Criticism, and his essays are currently being translated into two other languages. In addition to having studied philosophy in both the United States and Europe, Joseph holds a degree in art history and has worked for several art institutions.
Colin McQuillan is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, USA. He has studied at the Univerzita Karlova in Prague, Czech Republic and the Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle (Saale), Germany, in addition to conducting archival research in Marburg, Göttingen, and Berlin, Germany.