Natural Classicism: Essays on Literature and Science

By Frederick Turner

Book Overview

This book presents Turner's exploration of - and attempt to integrate - principles of literature, art, music, biology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics and aesthetics. It is Turner's contention that a non-reductive reconciliation of disciplines is possible, and he proposes a new great chain of being that is evolutionary and dynamic, and both proved and empowered by the achievements of the great detour the West took through materialistic empiricism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813913918
• ISBN13: 9780813913919
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

For a New Poetics

This is Turner's first expression of his idea of natural classicism. These essays together lay the groundwork for everything that is to come in Turner's philosophical excursions. Why are poems broken up into line lengths in every language in every culture throughout human history and pre-history? And why are those line lengths always around 3 seconds in length when recited? Perhaps because the human short-term memory slot is 3 seconds in duration. Poetic forms are thus no accident, but part of our very nature, of our very neural structure. This insight is from just one of the essays. Others lay the groundwork for Turner's renewal of the arts through natural classicism -- where the arts reflect nature, including our human nature, which puts them back in relation with humans as humans, allowing for a renewal of the arts, and of culture. Turner goes on to develop these ideas further in Beauty: The Value of Values and Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit, but much of what is in these essays can only be found here. I strongly recommend it for those who sincerely wish to engage in how the arts can once again become meaningful.