The Critical Imagination

The Critical Imagination is a study of metaphor imaginativeness and criticism of the arts. Since the eighteenth century many philosophers have argued that appreciating art is rewarding because it involves responding imaginatively to a work. Literary works can be interpreted in many ways; architecture can be seen as stately meditative or forbidding; and sensitive descriptions of art are often colourful metaphors: music can shimmer prose can be perfumed and a painter''s colouring can be effervescent. Engaging with art like creating it seems to offer great scope for imagination. Hume Kant Oscar Wilde Roger Scruton and others have defended variations on this attractive idea. In this book James Grant critically examines it.The first half explains the role imaginativeness plays in criticism. To do this Grant answers three questions that are of interest in their own right. First what are the aims of criticism? Is the point of criticizing a work to evaluate it to explain it to modify our response to it or something else? Second what is it to appreciate art? Third what is imaginativeness? He gives new answers to all three questions and uses them to explain the role of imaginativeness in criticism.The book''s second half focuses on metaphor. Why are some metaphors so effective? How do we understand metaphors? Are some thoughts expressible only in metaphor? Grant''s answers to these questions go against much current thinking in the philosophy of language. He uses these answers to explain why imaginative metaphors are so common in art criticism. The result is a rigorous and original theory of metaphor criticism imaginativeness and their interrelations.