On Trust: Art and the Temptations of Suspicion - Hardcover

Josipovici (humanities, Univ. of Sussex, England; The Book of God) investigates the concept of trust in art, showing that certain artists have been able to give themselves over fully to some aspect of the world Artists like Dante, Shakespeare, and a few moderns such as Proust, Beckett, and Eliot expected the world to be, at its deepest level, a place of peace and goodnessAwhich allowed them to express a full vision of the world. He contrasts these writers with the Romantics, showing how their suspicion and distrust diminished literature and, in turn, life. For Josipovici, the Romantic culture was the dividing time in Western thought when the ideas of the Homeric spirit and the Hebrew Bible were finally lost. Josipovici uses Dante as an example of trust in language and Shakespeare as an example of the trust in craft. Besides discussing literature and criticism, this fine work is engaged with the deepest problems of existence. Recommended for literature collections.AGene Shaw, NYPL
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On Trust is a provocative book on a vital topic, written with an intensity of concern that deepens our comprehension that something precious has been lost. -- Bill Marx, Boston Globe