Review Of "Into The Open: Reflections On Genius And Modernity" By B. Taylor

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

1-1-1996

Published In

Choice

Abstract

With acute sensitivity to the sensual and evocative potentials of the written word, Taylor confronts the waning power of the Romanticist vision of genius in the modernist age. The fate of genius, or the idea of individuals who transcend the ordinary, giving expression to forces beyond the "merely caused," is examined in the works of three modernist trailblazers: Walter Pater, Paul Valery, and Sigmund Freud. Through an analysis of their writings, and most particularly their confrontation with the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Taylor locates a powerful ambivalence. Although each wishes to demask the face of genius, none can fully accomplish the feat. As Taylor concludes, the potential of transcendent powers is an idea "we cannot not believe in." The volume does suffer, however, from inattention to the sociocultural context of the discourse of genius, and to the scores of modernists who have blithely jettisoned the concept. Appropriate for upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Comments

This work is freely available courtesy of Choice Reviews. The review has been reproduced in full in the abstract field.

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