Conventional wisdom suggests that aesthetic experiences - those moments when the senses come to life - are important only after more basic needs have been met. In this inspiring wealth of provocative ideas, Yi-Fu Tuan demonstrates that feeling and beauty are essential parts of life and society. The aesthetic is shown to be not merely one aspect of culture but its central core - both its driving force and its ultimate goal. Beginning with the individual and the physical world, the author's exploration progresses from the simple to the complex. Tuan starts by examining the building blocks of aesthetic experience - sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste - and gradually expands his analysis to include the most elaborate of human constructs, including art, architecture, literature, philosophy, music, and landscape. This leads him to the realm of politics, where he grapples with the fundamental question of the relationship between goodness and beauty, and of how the aesthetic can become a moral force within society. To guide the reader along this journey, the author describes how the aesthetic operates in four widely disparate cultures: Australian aboriginal, Chinese, medieval European, and modern American. Yi-Fu Tuan, one of our most influential and original thinkers, brilliantly conveys the profound fascination of multisensory reality, and in so doing enables us to make connections among even the most diffuse elements of our lives. While Tuan does not ignore human folly, Passing Strange and Wonderful is a celebration of the world around us, our experiences, and our creations.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Tuan, a geography professor (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison) and author ( Topophilia , Columbia, 1990), persuasively argues that aesthetics is "not merely a dimension or aspect of culture, but its emotional- aspirational core, both its drive and its goal." His analysis progresses from the individual and the physical world as accessed through sense experience to complex human creations of beauty in various media. Tuan also examines social contributions to aesthetics, especially as found in four disparate cultures: Australian Aboriginal, Chinese, medieval European, and America today. His work emphasizes positive aspects of social environmental issues, but it does not deny the human folly that has contributed to problems of the environment. Highly recommended for all libraries.
- Carolyn Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmwood, Va.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Carolyn Craft, Longwood Coll., Farmwood, Va.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
Tuan (Geography/University of Wisconsin at Madison) attempts to elevate the idea of the aesthetic to what he considers its proper place in the social context, in particular to its place as the impetus behind the formation and sustaining of cultural systems. In the aesthetic (which Tuan defines as ``senses come to life''), the author believes he's found the driving force behind-- and the goal of--life, bringing it joy and giving it form. The aesthetic, he says, can be found reflected on every level of our existence. Tuan starts by poking around in the philosophical mode, examining the aesthetic expressions of our senses--fragrances, music, visual stimuli, the panoply of sounds--in some detail. He then muses over four diverse cultural/aesthetic milieus: those of Australian aborigines, medieval Europeans, Chinese, and modern Americans. Tuan's ruminations--on songlines and eremites, cathedrals and old hometowns, symbolic spaces and the state--are entertaining, and the breadth of his research is dazzling. But his meditations are left hanging: The linkages he hopes to construct- -between culture, nature, and the aesthetic; between the couplets of good/beautiful and moral/aesthetic--never fuse, regardless of how many curiosities are trotted out. Indeed, his legion of facts and anecdotes can come suffocatingly fast and furious. More problematical still are the times when soporifics lay thick on the ground (``metaphor reaches backward into synesthetic tendency and forward into symbol''). Tuan is a connoisseur of the arcane tidbit, but synthesis is not his forte. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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