This long-awaited translation of Das literarische Kunstwerk makes available for the first time in English Roman Ingarden's influential study. Though it is inter-disciplinary in scope, situated as it is on the borderlines of ontology and logic, philosophy of literature and theory of language, Ingarden's work has a deliberately narrow focus: the literary work, its structure and mode of existence. The Literary Work of Art establishes the groundwork for a philosophy of literature, i.e., an ontology in terms of which the basic (...) general structure of all literary works can be determined. This "essential anatomy" makes basic tools and concepts available for rigorous and subtle aesthetic analysis. (shrink)

For most people the city, particularly the industrial city, is the antithesis of the aesthetic. While there may be sections that have their charm, trucks and automobiles have conquered the urban streets and pedestrians scurry before them like vanquished before a victor. Gardens and parks are occasional oases amidst the stone desert of concrete and asphalt, but the dominating features of urban experience remain mechanical and electronic noise, trash, monolithic skyscrapers, and moving vehicles. The personal and intimate are swallowed up (...) in mass structure and mass culture. And the human place—precarious and threatened. (shrink)