Bücher von Andrew Ford

By "e;literary criticism"e; we usually mean a self-conscious act involving the technical and aesthetic appraisal, by individuals, of autonomous works of art. Aristotle and Plato come to mind. The word "e;social"e; does not. Yet, as this book shows, it should--if, that is, we wish to understand where literary criticism as we think of it today came from. Andrew Ford offers a new understanding of the development of criticism, demonstrating that its roots stretch back long before the sophists to public commentary on the performance of songs and poems in the preliterary era of ancient Greece. He pinpoints when and how, later in the Greek tradition than is usually assumed, poetry was studied as a discipline with its own principles and methods. The Origins of Criticism complements the usual, history-of-ideas approach to the topic precisely by treating criticism as a social as well as a theoretical activity. With unprecedented and penetrating detail, Ford considers varying scholarly interpretations of the key texts discussed. Examining Greek discussions of poetry from the late sixth century B.C. through the rise of poetics in the late fourth, he asks when we first can recognize anything like the modern notions of literature as imaginative writing and of literary criticism as a special knowledge of such writing. Serving as a monumental preface to Aristotle's Poetics, this book allows readers to discern the emergence, within the manifold activities that might be called criticism, of the historically specific discourse on poetry that has shaped subsequent Western approaches to literature.

In Try Whistling This , join a perceptive critic on a pleasurable journey through music and musicians, ideas and history. Andrew Ford traces the concept of dirty dancing back to 1610, marvels at the weirdness of Percy Grainger and considers the decision of Wilhelm Furtwangler to keep conducting under the Nazis.

The Sound of Pictures is an illuminating journey through the soundtracks of more than 400 movies. How do filmmakers play with sound? And how does that affect the way we watch their films? Whether pop or classical, sweeping or sparse, soundtracks play a crucial role in how we experience cinema.

Charts the course of music over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, linking it to developments in literature, theatre, cinema and the visual arts, and to popular music from Irving Berlin to The Beatles to rap. The result is a stimulating, provocative and always informative cultural history.