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What Good Are the Arts?
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What Good Are the Arts? Hardback - 2006

by John Carey

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John Carey--one of Britain's most respected literary critics--offers a delightfully skeptical look at the nature of art. He debunks claims that the arts create better people or that judgements about art are anything more than personal opinion.

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From the publisher

Hailed as "exhilarating and suggestive" (Spectator), "thought-provoking and entertaining" (David Lodge, Sunday Times), and "incisive and inspirational" (Guardian), What Good are the Arts? offers a delightfully skeptical look at the nature of art. John Carey--one of Britain's most respected literary critics--here cuts through the cant surrounding the fine arts, debunking claims that the arts make us better people or that judgments about art are anything more than personal opinion. But Carey does argue strongly for the value of art as an activity and for the superiority of one art in particular: literature. Literature, he contends, is the only art capable of reasoning, and the only art that can criticize. Literature has the ability to inspire the mind and the heart towards practical ends far better than any work of conceptual art. Here then is a lively and stimulating invitation to debate the value of art, a provocative book that "anyone seriously interested in the arts should read" (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post).

Details

  • Title What Good Are the Arts?
  • Author John Carey
  • Binding Hardback
  • Edition FIRST ED
  • Pages 304
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Oxford University Press, New York, NY
  • Publication date 2006-01-20
  • Features Bibliography, Dust Cover, Index, Table of Contents
  • ISBN 9780195305548 / 019530554X
  • Weight 1.15 lbs (0.52 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.6 x 5.7 x 1 in (21.84 x 14.48 x 2.54 cm)
  • Category Art & Art Instruction
  • Library of Congress subjects Aesthetics, Art - Philosophy
  • Library of Congress Catalogue Number 2005018494
  • Dewey Decimal Code 700.1

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Citations

  • Library Journal, 01/02/2006, Page 0

About the author

John Carey is the Chief Book Reviewer for The Sunday Times (London).
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What Good Are the Arts?
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What Good Are the Arts?

by Carey, John

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Hardback. New. Do the arts make us better people? Why should "high" art be thought higher than "low"? In the first part of this spirited polemic, Carey returns startling answers to these and related questions. In the second part he makes a provocative case for the superiority of literature to all other arts.
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What Good Are the Arts?
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What Good Are the Arts?

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What Good Are the Arts?

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Hardback. New. Do the arts make us better people? Why should "high" art be thought higher than "low"? In the first part of this spirited polemic, Carey returns startling answers to these and related questions. In the second part he makes a provocative case for the superiority of literature to all other arts.
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