The Geography of the Imagination: Forty Essays

About this book

Forty essays on history art and literature from one of the most incisive and most exhilarating critical minds of the 20th century. In this collection Guy Davenport serves as the readers guide through history and literature pointing out the values and avenues of thought that have shaped our ideas and our thinking. Davenport provides links between art and literature music and sculpture modernist poets and classic philosophers the past and present. And pretty much everything in between. Not only has he seemingly read (and often translated from the original languages) everything in print he also has the ability expressed with unalloyed enthusiasm to make the connections to see how cultural synapses make define and reflect our civilization. As The Los Angeles Times Book Review wrote There is no way to prepare yourself for reading Guy Davenport. You stand in awe before his knowledge of the archaic and his knowledge of the modern. Even more you stand in awe of the connections he can make between the archaic and the modern; he makes the remote familiar and the familiar fundamental.