In this work, Victoria Nelson illuminates the deep but hidden attraction the supernatural still holds for a secular mainstream culture that forced the transcendental underground and firmly displaced wonder and awe with the forces of reason, materialism, and science. In a backward look at an era now drawing to a close, "The Secret Life of Puppets" describes a curious reversal in the roles of art and religion: where art and literature once took their content from religion, we came increasingly to seek religion, covertly, ...
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In this work, Victoria Nelson illuminates the deep but hidden attraction the supernatural still holds for a secular mainstream culture that forced the transcendental underground and firmly displaced wonder and awe with the forces of reason, materialism, and science. In a backward look at an era now drawing to a close, "The Secret Life of Puppets" describes a curious reversal in the roles of art and religion: where art and literature once took their content from religion, we came increasingly to seek religion, covertly, through art and entertainment. In a tour of Western culture that is at once exhilarating and alarming, Nelson shows us the distorted forms in which the spiritual resurfaced in high art but also, strikingly, in the mass culture of puppets, horror-fantasy literature, and cyborgs: from the works of Kleist, Poe, Musil, and Lovecraft to Philip K. Dick and virtual reality simulations. At the end of the millennium, discarding a convention of the demonized grotesque that endured 300 years, a Demiurgic consciousness shaped in Late Antiquity is emerging anew to re-divinize the human as artists like Lars von Trier and Will Self reinvent expressionism in forms familiar to our pre-Reformation ancestors. Here as never before, we see how pervasively but unwittingly, consuming art forms of the fantastic, we allow ourselves to believe.
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Add this copy of The Secret Life of Puppets to cart. $52.00, like new condition, Sold by Doc O'Connor rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Fort Wright, KY, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Harvard University Press.
Add this copy of The Secret Life of Puppets to cart. $60.00, like new condition, Sold by Great Expectations Rare Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Staten Island, NY, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Harvard University Press.
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Seller's Description:
As New in As New jacket. Book. 8vo-over 7æ-9æ" tall. Hardcover in publisher's non price-clipped dust-jacket. 350 pages. Bibliographical References, Index. Illustrated with black and white drawings, engravings and photographs. Presumed first edition, with no additional printings listed. A look at western culture writ large as continuum between two modalities: the transcendental and spiritual and the scientific and reason based, and their relative positions of ascendancy and retreat as they play out in the modern era. No previous ownership marks. A clean, fresh, unmarked and like new copy. Dust-jacket now in new Brodart cover. As new in an as new dust-jacket.
Add this copy of The Secret Life of Puppets to cart. $115.00, like new condition, Sold by KAKBooks rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Marino, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Harvard University Press.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in very good dust jacket. Hardcover edition, as pictured. ISBN #0674006305. Some yellow spots on inside dust jacket. Slight cover wear. Sewn binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 350 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade.
Add this copy of The Secret Life of Puppets to cart. $96.36, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Harvard University Press.
Add this copy of The Secret Life of Puppets to cart. $121.19, new condition, Sold by Just one more Chapter rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Miramar, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Harvard University Press.
Add this copy of The Secret Life of Puppets to cart. $125.76, new condition, Sold by GridFreed rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from North Las Vegas, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Harvard University Press.
Add this copy of The Secret Life of Puppets to cart. $150.23, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Harvard University Press.
