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Knowledge Trilogy #2
The Creators 1st (first) edition Text Only
In this companion volume to his bestseller The Discoverers, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel Boorstin brings to life more than 3000 years of human artistic achievement. This immensely readable & engrossing book examines what people have added to the painting, sculpture, architecture, theology, philosophy, poetry, drama, music, film etc.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Daniel J. Boorstin
196 books373 followersDaniel Joseph Boorstin was a historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He was appointed twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1975 until 1987.
He graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 15. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University. He was a lawyer and a university professor at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.
His The Americans The Democratic Experience received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history.
Within the discipline of social theory, Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture—mainly due to advertising—where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or "real" than the event itself. He goes on to coin the term pseudo-event which describes events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity. The idea of pseudo-events closely mirrors work later done by Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord. The work is still often used as a text in American sociology courses.
When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin "was not a library administrator." The Senate confirmed the nomination without debate.
Boorstin died in 2004 in Washington, D.C.
He graduated from Tulsa's Central High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the age of 15. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard, studied at Balliol College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and earned his PhD at Yale University. He was a lawyer and a university professor at the University of Chicago for 25 years. He also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution.
His The Americans The Democratic Experience received the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in history.
Within the discipline of social theory, Boorstin’s 1961 book The Image A Guide to Pseudo-events in America is an early description of aspects of American life that were later termed hyperreality and postmodernity. In The Image, Boorstin describes shifts in American culture—mainly due to advertising—where the reproduction or simulation of an event becomes more important or "real" than the event itself. He goes on to coin the term pseudo-event which describes events or activities that serve little to no purpose other than to be reproduced through advertisements or other forms of publicity. The idea of pseudo-events closely mirrors work later done by Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord. The work is still often used as a text in American sociology courses.
When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin "was not a library administrator." The Senate confirmed the nomination without debate.
Boorstin died in 2004 in Washington, D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
January 10, 2017
I don't usually like surveys of history, but Boorstin still does a good job of describing hundreds of artists, scientists and dreamers that formed the western conscience. It is a long book but as each chapter is just a handful of pages, it is not difficult to read. You could read this as a sort of introduction and then choose various people and then go off and research biographies of them independently as I did. In any case, it is readable and interesting.
Want to read
August 23, 2008I won this book as a prize in my History of Psychology class in college. We had to come to class dressed as one of the psychological figures we'd learned about that semester. Most came as Freud or Erikson, with a few Skinners thrown in. I came as Phinneus Gage, a mild-mannered railroad worker from Vermont who got stabbed in the head with a tamping iron and lived, but became such an asshole no one wanted to be around him anymore, thus giving researchers insight into the goings on of the temporal lobe. I came to class in bloodied railroad-striped overalls and fashioned a tamping iron out of cardboard that I affixed to my head. I started yelling at everyone in my class, using a plethora of dirty words in my best Vermont accent.
I won. Hands down. But I still haven't read this book...
I won. Hands down. But I still haven't read this book...
September 27, 2022
This is a magnificent book and I liked reading it a lot. But in the end I feel somewhat unsatisfied.
Boorstin had previously told us the tale of the Discoverers. Also a huge and admirable book, but with a natural and for this reason comparatively simple structure. What were the great discoveries? Tell us about the people who made them.
A history of the Heroes of the Imagination! That is some different task. And the first question is who are those heroes? The greatest creators? Okay, Homer? Check. Shakespeare? Of course! Michelangelo? No doubt. Goethe? Nice to have him. Boswell? What?
Now, Boorstin credits Boswell with the invention of the “intimate biography”. Just like Montaigne “invented” the essay. So, it seems, inventing something makes you just as important as being truly a genius at what you do. I am not saying this is a bad decision by the author, but the overall impression when I look at the creators described is that the list is to some extent arbitrary. Dostoevsky but no Tolstoy? No Dumas, Defoe, Swift etc.?
The book contains a prologue and then three parts, Creator Man, Creating the World and Creating the Self. This gives us the illusion of structure, but it is not really. At the end we get a bunch of short biographies of people the author thinks are important for one reason or another and maybe for very idiosyncratic reasons. I am not saying this is bad but I do not like the way he tries to give the impression that his choices are somehow objective.
Lets go to the the twentieth century. Here we get the following (creators of the self): Kafka, Proust, Joyce, Woolf and Picasso. An odd list. So Woolf is in maybe because he needed at least one woman? (And it gave him the chance to at least mention the fact that there had been an Austen and a Brontë.)
Picasso, the first painter worth mentioning after Michelangelo? There was no musician worth mentioning after Wagner?
Again, you can’t please everyone with a book like this. He does include architects and photographers. And there is an epilogue that at least admits that there is an art called movies. Where it seems nothing of importance has happened since Eisenstein. (The book appeared in 1992). Okay, no Hitchcock and of course no Beatles, no Stan Lee. That is the way it is.
7/10
Boorstin had previously told us the tale of the Discoverers. Also a huge and admirable book, but with a natural and for this reason comparatively simple structure. What were the great discoveries? Tell us about the people who made them.
A history of the Heroes of the Imagination! That is some different task. And the first question is who are those heroes? The greatest creators? Okay, Homer? Check. Shakespeare? Of course! Michelangelo? No doubt. Goethe? Nice to have him. Boswell? What?
Now, Boorstin credits Boswell with the invention of the “intimate biography”. Just like Montaigne “invented” the essay. So, it seems, inventing something makes you just as important as being truly a genius at what you do. I am not saying this is a bad decision by the author, but the overall impression when I look at the creators described is that the list is to some extent arbitrary. Dostoevsky but no Tolstoy? No Dumas, Defoe, Swift etc.?
The book contains a prologue and then three parts, Creator Man, Creating the World and Creating the Self. This gives us the illusion of structure, but it is not really. At the end we get a bunch of short biographies of people the author thinks are important for one reason or another and maybe for very idiosyncratic reasons. I am not saying this is bad but I do not like the way he tries to give the impression that his choices are somehow objective.
Lets go to the the twentieth century. Here we get the following (creators of the self): Kafka, Proust, Joyce, Woolf and Picasso. An odd list. So Woolf is in maybe because he needed at least one woman? (And it gave him the chance to at least mention the fact that there had been an Austen and a Brontë.)
Picasso, the first painter worth mentioning after Michelangelo? There was no musician worth mentioning after Wagner?
Again, you can’t please everyone with a book like this. He does include architects and photographers. And there is an epilogue that at least admits that there is an art called movies. Where it seems nothing of importance has happened since Eisenstein. (The book appeared in 1992). Okay, no Hitchcock and of course no Beatles, no Stan Lee. That is the way it is.
7/10
September 16, 2016
This is not a book most people would sit down and read cover to cover. I've been reading it in bits since November of 2015. I have to admit there were a few sections that did not interest me so much that I skimmed over quickly. This book is a tremendous achievement with a broad scope and well worth the effort of reading even if it takes some time.
February 6, 2016
Review title: Present at the creation
3 books, 12 parts, 70 chapters: Boorstin has written an encyclopedia of the imagination. Starting with a background in the creative forces harnesed or inhibited by the major world religious traditions: Hindu, Confucian, Jewish, Christian, Islam, Boorstin then begins his journey through the creative arts starting with the most material: architecture and sculpture. The first creative arena involving words is drama, which he traces from its Greek roots in representations of moving sculpture!
Much like any structure of organization (the Dewey Decimal System, the encyclopedia, Rogets thesaurus), Boorstin's organization of the information becomes both part of the information and informs the information it orders. Not every reader will agree with his structure but it is a useful way to focus on an incredibly broad vista. And as he describes these creators and their modes of creation he reminds us at the beginning and again in an endnote much later, "We are better able to see the what and the how than the why." So this is a book of the whats (architecture, art, music, drama, novels, poetry) and the hows (places, peoples, cultures, and individual creators) in a structured framework without a lot of analysis or theorizing on the whys.
And indeed, as Boorstin leads us through his framework of the men and women he introduces it is interesting how often he uses the term "mystery" when it comes to the why (the motive, the cause and effect, the impetus, the inspiration) for these creators. For example, James Boswell's obsessive record of Samuel Johnson's life and conversation (some called him an "accidental" biographer, we learn), or Herman Melville's decision to make a (fitful at best) living at writing which resulted in a few early popular successes but a tepid reception and sales in his lifetime for his one true masterpiece. While we humans may create because we are made in God the Creator's image, we are a sin-broken version of the model so our creations are as often flawed as we are. And perhaps it is that record of failure that makes the successes Boorstin describes here (and that we absorb with a spiritual appreciation) shine with such transcendent beauty.
Boorstin's framework progresses from arts that recreate the external world to arts that create the internal self. The division is essentially between the classical and the modern, divided by the Enlightenment. The progression inward culminates with James Joyce's stream of conciousness writing and Picasso's progressive painting, then Boorstin tacks on a brief epilogue of the art of the film, which feels like it needs to be developed into its own section, to explore more fully the nexus if creation in what Boorstin calls a "public art" that involves thousands of people and millions of dollars.
The Creators is a good survey of the range of the creation and the creators, with notes for further reading on both. While the book's publication in 1992 means that the references are now dated, they can still serve as a good starting point for the reader's own journey through the classics. Readers may also want to read Jacques Barzun's: From Dawn to Decadence , from 2000, which I rated five stars for its brilliant and opinionated stance in mapping 500 years of culture.
3 books, 12 parts, 70 chapters: Boorstin has written an encyclopedia of the imagination. Starting with a background in the creative forces harnesed or inhibited by the major world religious traditions: Hindu, Confucian, Jewish, Christian, Islam, Boorstin then begins his journey through the creative arts starting with the most material: architecture and sculpture. The first creative arena involving words is drama, which he traces from its Greek roots in representations of moving sculpture!
Much like any structure of organization (the Dewey Decimal System, the encyclopedia, Rogets thesaurus), Boorstin's organization of the information becomes both part of the information and informs the information it orders. Not every reader will agree with his structure but it is a useful way to focus on an incredibly broad vista. And as he describes these creators and their modes of creation he reminds us at the beginning and again in an endnote much later, "We are better able to see the what and the how than the why." So this is a book of the whats (architecture, art, music, drama, novels, poetry) and the hows (places, peoples, cultures, and individual creators) in a structured framework without a lot of analysis or theorizing on the whys.
And indeed, as Boorstin leads us through his framework of the men and women he introduces it is interesting how often he uses the term "mystery" when it comes to the why (the motive, the cause and effect, the impetus, the inspiration) for these creators. For example, James Boswell's obsessive record of Samuel Johnson's life and conversation (some called him an "accidental" biographer, we learn), or Herman Melville's decision to make a (fitful at best) living at writing which resulted in a few early popular successes but a tepid reception and sales in his lifetime for his one true masterpiece. While we humans may create because we are made in God the Creator's image, we are a sin-broken version of the model so our creations are as often flawed as we are. And perhaps it is that record of failure that makes the successes Boorstin describes here (and that we absorb with a spiritual appreciation) shine with such transcendent beauty.
Boorstin's framework progresses from arts that recreate the external world to arts that create the internal self. The division is essentially between the classical and the modern, divided by the Enlightenment. The progression inward culminates with James Joyce's stream of conciousness writing and Picasso's progressive painting, then Boorstin tacks on a brief epilogue of the art of the film, which feels like it needs to be developed into its own section, to explore more fully the nexus if creation in what Boorstin calls a "public art" that involves thousands of people and millions of dollars.
The Creators is a good survey of the range of the creation and the creators, with notes for further reading on both. While the book's publication in 1992 means that the references are now dated, they can still serve as a good starting point for the reader's own journey through the classics. Readers may also want to read Jacques Barzun's: From Dawn to Decadence , from 2000, which I rated five stars for its brilliant and opinionated stance in mapping 500 years of culture.
August 12, 2012
It wasn't long enough - seriously.
May 31, 2024
There is much to respect here, it is scope and comparative framework, although like any synthesis specialists will find holes. My issue is the prose. It is not bad, but terribly wordy and without the wit and judgement needed to make grand books like this work best. The definition of a noble failure, and for those who like the prose I would recommend it.
September 1, 2023
A monumental look at authors and artists over the span of human history. Very readable as it is separated into short chapters/essays on each subject. Very lengthy as well so be prepared to spend some time with this book. Well worth it.
May 11, 2025
Aesthetic and intellectual innovations from great art to great architectural to philosophy have been a major part of the shaping of Western culture, but they didn’t appear out of nowhere and we have people thank for them. The Creators by Daniel J. Boorstin is a historic tale of the individuals that innovated in the styles of art, architecture, literature, music, and more from Vedic India to the 20th Century.
Boorstin over the course of almost 750 pages covers the development of various cultural aspects that have grown and evolved over the course of Western civilization. When possible, individuals are highlighted in biographical sketches as well as their contribution to the subject being discussed, though whenever the origins of the beginning of are murky or more communal in nature before individuals began to impact them Boorstin ready provides the information as such. Yet this approach of highlighting the Western tradition over the rest of the world through either ignoring it or simply writing off the rest of the world as disingenuous—his covering the Japanese long use of wood for architecture didn’t factor into the reality of how many earthquakes the nation dealt with and how quickly rebuilding homes were put back up with wood in comparison to stone. Also, some of Boorstin’s information was incorrect and he overlooked individual’s negative aspects in almost making them myths to illuminate. While some might believe Boorstin is being subjective in what he included, given wide range of time and the cultural aspects involved not everything could be included and so some selection is required in which an author’s personal preference will undoubtedly play a big role since they are writing the book. Overall, the volume is informative for someone looking for a general cultural history of the West, but if you want something more authoritative then this wouldn’t be the book.
The Creators is the middle volume of a trilogy by Daniel Boorstin on “Knowledge”, a hefty book that covers the development and evolution of Western cultural history.
Boorstin over the course of almost 750 pages covers the development of various cultural aspects that have grown and evolved over the course of Western civilization. When possible, individuals are highlighted in biographical sketches as well as their contribution to the subject being discussed, though whenever the origins of the beginning of are murky or more communal in nature before individuals began to impact them Boorstin ready provides the information as such. Yet this approach of highlighting the Western tradition over the rest of the world through either ignoring it or simply writing off the rest of the world as disingenuous—his covering the Japanese long use of wood for architecture didn’t factor into the reality of how many earthquakes the nation dealt with and how quickly rebuilding homes were put back up with wood in comparison to stone. Also, some of Boorstin’s information was incorrect and he overlooked individual’s negative aspects in almost making them myths to illuminate. While some might believe Boorstin is being subjective in what he included, given wide range of time and the cultural aspects involved not everything could be included and so some selection is required in which an author’s personal preference will undoubtedly play a big role since they are writing the book. Overall, the volume is informative for someone looking for a general cultural history of the West, but if you want something more authoritative then this wouldn’t be the book.
The Creators is the middle volume of a trilogy by Daniel Boorstin on “Knowledge”, a hefty book that covers the development and evolution of Western cultural history.
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September 2, 2019The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination by Daniel J. Boorstin is a collection of descriptions of various creations throughout the history of humanity. This collection includes the creation of various religions, styles of architecture, literature, visual arts, and music. In addition, by explaining how each led into the next creation, Boorstin provides a comprehensive study of how mankind, especially Western civilization, invented and re-invented itself. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination is a comprehensive and fascinating study of man's creativity throughout history.
The prologue encompasses Parts 1-2 and offers an overview of religions and how they affected man's abilities to create. These religions include very basic surveys of Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Homeric verse, Judaism, Theology, Christianity and Islam.
Book 1 includes Parts 3-5 and focuses on the early creation of mankind. Part 3 is centered on architectural advances in history, such as the pyramids and the Pantheon, while Part 4 highlights early visual arts, such as cave drawings and the battle against images by both the Christian Iconoclasts and Muslims. Part 5 hones in on performance art, showing how the dithyramb developed into comedy and tragedy, as well as the creation of prose for purposes of persuasion.
Book 2 consists of Parts 6-10 and provides an emphasis on re-creations of previous creations. Part 6 covers the humanities as it was affected by the emerging religion of Christianity, and Part 7 focuses on the development of literature, starting in the Middle Ages and continuing through to the eighteenth century. Part 8 focuses on visual arts, Part 9 emphasizes the creators in the sphere of music, and Part 10 concentrates on various other creations, such as photography and the skyscraper.
In Book 3, which is comprised of Parts 11-12 and the epilogue, the author focuses on the creation of the self, mainly in literature. Part 11 focuses on literature exclusively, including essay, biography, autobiography, and several influential authors: Goethe, Wordsworth and T. S. Eliot. Part 12 fixates on literature also, but the final section is focused on the stylistic inventions of Pablo Picasso. Some of the authors examined in Part 12 include the following: Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. The Epilogue provides a very brief exploration of film and its association with the public, who acts as a participant by being the audience.
Dante
Dante (1265-1321) created the epic of every man's exile from life to death in a poetic combining of courtly love with the love of God; "Divine Comedy" (1308) was autobiographical, broader, more dramatic and more didactic than Dante's earlier works as it followed the progress of Dante's soul, telling the story of a man confronted with the consequence of the cosmology of the Middle Ages and causing Dante to be deemed the creator of modern literature.
Boccaccio
The horrors of the plague provided Boccaccio with the incentive and opportunity to write stories of human adventures and misadventures without morals. In the "Decameron", he created "a human panorama of love, courage, cowardice, wit, wisdom, deceit, and folly" (p.269).
Geoffrey Chaucer
The pilgrim metaphor permeated Christian literature with its own rituals and had become a flourishing institution by Chaucer's time, providing the reason Chaucer used pilgrimage for his contribution to the human comedy. "Canterbury Tales", written in the last decade of Chaucer's life, marks a surprising new vision and outshines all of his other works as it is written as a narrative poem in which a group of thirty-one pilgrims, representing many various social groups, traveling from London to Canterbury share tales. Creating a new version of the human comedy, "Canterbury Tales" also shows sample forms of medieval narrative, use of Arthurian themes and morals in each narrative.
Rabelais
Rabelais wrote five volumes about "Pantagruel", luxuriating in vulgarity. According to the author of this book, "when we read Rabelais in translation, we are grasping for his wit through a veil. Rabelais's book was an act of faith in a language he was beginning to make literary" (p. 294).
Cervantes
Cervante's "Don Quixote", sometimes called the first modern novel, was born as a kind of anti-novel, written to kill off romances of chivalry and accidentally creating the prototype of the novel. With this commercial success, Cervantes created a new form, the Western novel, which reached out even as it reached in; unlike typical romances of the time where the hero was an epic figure, Cervante's hero was a modest man.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare produced his own version of the human comedy for a new audience in a newly flourishing art form as the Renaissance furnished a community of spectators like those who inspired the great Greek dramatists. Though Shakespeare also wrote poetry, the best of which being his 154 sonnets published in 1609, he was committed to the theatre, writing thirty-six plays in his life. Shakespeare represented nature though his characters, and the cult of Shakespeare has never died; George Bernard Shaw termed the idolatry of Shakespeare as "bardolatry" in 1901.
John Milton
John Milton's "Paradise Lost" created "poetry and prose of the pains, rewards, and vagaries of man's adventures in choice" (page 320). After publishing "Comus" in 1634 and "Lycidas" in 1637, Milton spent twenty years writing prose, including "Defense of the English People" in 1649 and "Of Education", one of the last manifestos of Renaissance humanism in 1644. After being imprisoned and going blind, Milton wrote his great epic, "Paradise Lost", where the drama and tragedy come from the choices made by God, Satan, Eve, Christ and Adam. Milton also wrote "Paradise Regained" (1671) and "Samson Agonistes" (1671), though he never sought solace in easy dogma or became a member of any sect. Few poets ever did more to make the English language live than Milton.
Balzac
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) published all of his works as "La Comedie humaine" in 1841. A prodigy, Balzac wrote ninety-two novels, dozens of short stories and six plays, and he gave the new classic shape to the novel by creating a novel of ideas. Giving the greatest intensity of life to his characters, he made the novel into a modern kind of history which was more elusive and intimate than the respected classic forms.
Charles Dickens
Dickens (1812-1870) was a great event in English history as well as English literature for his career was "a grand literary love affair with the English public" (page 364). Among Dickens' many famous works are "Pickwick Papers" (1836), "Oliver Twist" (1839), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839), "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1844), "David Copperfield" (1850), "A Christmas Carol" (1843), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859), "Bleak House" (1853), and "Great Expectations" (1861). Fascinated with the theatre, Dickens took leave of the public actively when his doctor warned him against public readings because of his ill health. At the last engagement during a series of reading in 1870, Dickens announced to the audience that he was vanishing forevermore from the public as he cried.
Leonardo da Vinci
Vinci (1452-1519) defended the artist's sovereignty by claiming painting was liberal art because it dealt with the works of nature as well as an infinite number of things nature never created. Da Vinci left only seventeen finished paintings and several unfinished paintings, some of his most popular being "Mona Lisa" (1503) and "The Last Supper" (1498), but the quality makes up for the lack of quantity.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo (1475-1564) is a legacy from the Renaissance who transformed art, taking man from the imitation of nature to a re-creation of nature. He created many famous sculptures as a youth, and when he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he agreed to the project though painting was not his art. After four years of labor, the ceiling was unveiled in 1512 and was an incomparably excellent work. Michelangelo's genius "inspired others to make a fetish of genius" (p. 419).
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the first "colossus of music in an age that idolized the artist genius" (p. 428), created a variety of music that excels all modern composers. He was idolized as a genius who created music for both the church and the general public.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
A child prodigy on the violin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) composed eight symphonies, four divertimentos and some sacred works in only a few months when he was just sixteen years old. His best works were composed during the summer of 1788, including his symphones in E Flat, G Minor and C, and when he died at age thirty-six of malnutrition and overwork, he stated "I have finished before I could enjoy my talent" (p. 451).
Beethoven
Beethoven (1770-1827) recreated instrumental music by elaborating Haydn and Mozart's classical forms for wider audiences. Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in F Major was considered the prototype of program music, and he is widely praised for his work with instrumental music and possibilities in the orchestra, as well as for uniting the music of instruments and the music of words to create new forms.
Monet
Monet (1840-1926) was encouraged to preserve his first impression, and he developed into a bold Impressionist. His paintings had no subject and were only the momentary impression on his unique self; "his achievement was not in the durable but in the elusive moment" (p. 524).
Benjamin Franklin
The second classic biography, "Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin is explored in Section 59: The Arts of Seeming Truthful: Autobiography, and this allowed him to create a new and modern form of literature: the success saga, a chronicle for the self-made man. Though "Autobiography" is incoherent and incomplete, it is often called the first American addition to world literature.
James Boswell
James Boswell, the first biographer, wrote about Dr. Samuel Johnson. "Life of Johnson" (1787) is meant to exhibit Johnson more completely than any other person had yet been preserved, and this biography announced "a modern literary creation- the individual life becoming the raw material of art" (p. 598).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) found his place among the great creators of Western literature for giving enduring form to the spirit of the Medieval legend of Dr. Faustus in "Faust" which he wrote off and on from 1770 until his death in 1832. He transformed Dr. Faust into a hero on a quest for fulfillment as a metaphor for the "infinitely aspiring always dissatisfied modern self" (p. 605).
William Wordsworth
"Lyrical Ballads" (1801) by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) announced a revolution in poetry by declaring independence from the stilted conventions of poetic language by focusing on making a new expressive view of poetry. Wordsworth's best poetry was works of remembrance, but his focus on himself was not enough to sustain an epic.
T. S. Eliot
A century after Wordsworth, an anti-Romantic revolution came into English literature with T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) and his manifesto, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1917). Eliot and his collaborator, Ezra Pound (1888-1972) declared themselves the enemy of the Egotistical Self as they believed poetry was about continual self-sacrifice and extinction of personality, not about the poet. Finding security in a banking job, Eliot wrote his best poems while employed at the bank, including the first modernist poem published in America, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915). "The Waste Land" (1922) aims to express incoherence, and Pound hailed it as justifying the movement of the modern experiment.
Herman Melville
Seizing upon the popularity of whaling in New England in the early nineteenth century, Herman Melville used it as the subject of his great American epic, reflecting on the paradoxes of good and evil. Though it lacks the development and conflict of characters necessary for a novel, "Moby Dick" presents personalities described as caricatures, and Ahab's hunt for the whale represents the mystery of the self; for twentieth century readers, the novel became one of the most popular vehicles for the modern self.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) became the idol of Western literature despite his novels laying siege to Western values. He saw the materialism of Western science and mathematics as a denial of freedom. Drawing on his experience in prison, Dostoyevsky wrote "Crime and Punishment" (1866) about the story of a struggling soul, while "The Brothers Karamzov" (1879) accumulated the thoughts and impressions of his life. His "fanatic Slavomania reminded the West that there might be dimensions of life not seen in the clear stream of consciousness or in the murky depths of the unconscious" (p. 671).
Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) used time as the subject of his eight volumes created as a "new way of conquering time's transience and evanescence" (p. 684). The four volumes of "Remembrance of Things Past" is divided into seven sections focused on the following seven themes: childhood, awakening loves for people and the arts, high society, homosexual and heterosexual love, ways of being possessed, deprivation, and the cycle of recapturing life through memory. Proust believed the artist could capture and make himself immortal, though the disintegration of the self was continuous death. His originality was his way of conquering time by making it the raw material of his novel and "making it his art to re-create life in time rather than in space" (p. 696).
James Joyce
James Joyce (1882-1941) explored other outreaching possibilities of the self and "encompassed time in autobiography, creating new ways to make the self universal" (p. 699). He brought together the novel and biography as never before in "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916) and "Ulysses" (1922) by expanding his ideas from childhood and adolescent trials into a personal epic. By making art follow nature and focusing on the act of creation in the arts, Joyce recreated the mystery of art and the universe, making "the language of the self an invitation to rediscover and delight in the mystery" (p. 714).
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) shared her wonder at the mystery of the feminine self by experimenting with the self in her writings which were frequently about female authors. Making the novel her medium for exploration, she "wrote of the world within her, which she imagined also to be within others" ]]
The prologue encompasses Parts 1-2 and offers an overview of religions and how they affected man's abilities to create. These religions include very basic surveys of Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Homeric verse, Judaism, Theology, Christianity and Islam.
Book 1 includes Parts 3-5 and focuses on the early creation of mankind. Part 3 is centered on architectural advances in history, such as the pyramids and the Pantheon, while Part 4 highlights early visual arts, such as cave drawings and the battle against images by both the Christian Iconoclasts and Muslims. Part 5 hones in on performance art, showing how the dithyramb developed into comedy and tragedy, as well as the creation of prose for purposes of persuasion.
Book 2 consists of Parts 6-10 and provides an emphasis on re-creations of previous creations. Part 6 covers the humanities as it was affected by the emerging religion of Christianity, and Part 7 focuses on the development of literature, starting in the Middle Ages and continuing through to the eighteenth century. Part 8 focuses on visual arts, Part 9 emphasizes the creators in the sphere of music, and Part 10 concentrates on various other creations, such as photography and the skyscraper.
In Book 3, which is comprised of Parts 11-12 and the epilogue, the author focuses on the creation of the self, mainly in literature. Part 11 focuses on literature exclusively, including essay, biography, autobiography, and several influential authors: Goethe, Wordsworth and T. S. Eliot. Part 12 fixates on literature also, but the final section is focused on the stylistic inventions of Pablo Picasso. Some of the authors examined in Part 12 include the following: Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. The Epilogue provides a very brief exploration of film and its association with the public, who acts as a participant by being the audience.
Dante
Dante (1265-1321) created the epic of every man's exile from life to death in a poetic combining of courtly love with the love of God; "Divine Comedy" (1308) was autobiographical, broader, more dramatic and more didactic than Dante's earlier works as it followed the progress of Dante's soul, telling the story of a man confronted with the consequence of the cosmology of the Middle Ages and causing Dante to be deemed the creator of modern literature.
Boccaccio
The horrors of the plague provided Boccaccio with the incentive and opportunity to write stories of human adventures and misadventures without morals. In the "Decameron", he created "a human panorama of love, courage, cowardice, wit, wisdom, deceit, and folly" (p.269).
Geoffrey Chaucer
The pilgrim metaphor permeated Christian literature with its own rituals and had become a flourishing institution by Chaucer's time, providing the reason Chaucer used pilgrimage for his contribution to the human comedy. "Canterbury Tales", written in the last decade of Chaucer's life, marks a surprising new vision and outshines all of his other works as it is written as a narrative poem in which a group of thirty-one pilgrims, representing many various social groups, traveling from London to Canterbury share tales. Creating a new version of the human comedy, "Canterbury Tales" also shows sample forms of medieval narrative, use of Arthurian themes and morals in each narrative.
Rabelais
Rabelais wrote five volumes about "Pantagruel", luxuriating in vulgarity. According to the author of this book, "when we read Rabelais in translation, we are grasping for his wit through a veil. Rabelais's book was an act of faith in a language he was beginning to make literary" (p. 294).
Cervantes
Cervante's "Don Quixote", sometimes called the first modern novel, was born as a kind of anti-novel, written to kill off romances of chivalry and accidentally creating the prototype of the novel. With this commercial success, Cervantes created a new form, the Western novel, which reached out even as it reached in; unlike typical romances of the time where the hero was an epic figure, Cervante's hero was a modest man.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare produced his own version of the human comedy for a new audience in a newly flourishing art form as the Renaissance furnished a community of spectators like those who inspired the great Greek dramatists. Though Shakespeare also wrote poetry, the best of which being his 154 sonnets published in 1609, he was committed to the theatre, writing thirty-six plays in his life. Shakespeare represented nature though his characters, and the cult of Shakespeare has never died; George Bernard Shaw termed the idolatry of Shakespeare as "bardolatry" in 1901.
John Milton
John Milton's "Paradise Lost" created "poetry and prose of the pains, rewards, and vagaries of man's adventures in choice" (page 320). After publishing "Comus" in 1634 and "Lycidas" in 1637, Milton spent twenty years writing prose, including "Defense of the English People" in 1649 and "Of Education", one of the last manifestos of Renaissance humanism in 1644. After being imprisoned and going blind, Milton wrote his great epic, "Paradise Lost", where the drama and tragedy come from the choices made by God, Satan, Eve, Christ and Adam. Milton also wrote "Paradise Regained" (1671) and "Samson Agonistes" (1671), though he never sought solace in easy dogma or became a member of any sect. Few poets ever did more to make the English language live than Milton.
Balzac
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) published all of his works as "La Comedie humaine" in 1841. A prodigy, Balzac wrote ninety-two novels, dozens of short stories and six plays, and he gave the new classic shape to the novel by creating a novel of ideas. Giving the greatest intensity of life to his characters, he made the novel into a modern kind of history which was more elusive and intimate than the respected classic forms.
Charles Dickens
Dickens (1812-1870) was a great event in English history as well as English literature for his career was "a grand literary love affair with the English public" (page 364). Among Dickens' many famous works are "Pickwick Papers" (1836), "Oliver Twist" (1839), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839), "Martin Chuzzlewit" (1844), "David Copperfield" (1850), "A Christmas Carol" (1843), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859), "Bleak House" (1853), and "Great Expectations" (1861). Fascinated with the theatre, Dickens took leave of the public actively when his doctor warned him against public readings because of his ill health. At the last engagement during a series of reading in 1870, Dickens announced to the audience that he was vanishing forevermore from the public as he cried.
Leonardo da Vinci
Vinci (1452-1519) defended the artist's sovereignty by claiming painting was liberal art because it dealt with the works of nature as well as an infinite number of things nature never created. Da Vinci left only seventeen finished paintings and several unfinished paintings, some of his most popular being "Mona Lisa" (1503) and "The Last Supper" (1498), but the quality makes up for the lack of quantity.
Michelangelo
Michelangelo (1475-1564) is a legacy from the Renaissance who transformed art, taking man from the imitation of nature to a re-creation of nature. He created many famous sculptures as a youth, and when he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he agreed to the project though painting was not his art. After four years of labor, the ceiling was unveiled in 1512 and was an incomparably excellent work. Michelangelo's genius "inspired others to make a fetish of genius" (p. 419).
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the first "colossus of music in an age that idolized the artist genius" (p. 428), created a variety of music that excels all modern composers. He was idolized as a genius who created music for both the church and the general public.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
A child prodigy on the violin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) composed eight symphonies, four divertimentos and some sacred works in only a few months when he was just sixteen years old. His best works were composed during the summer of 1788, including his symphones in E Flat, G Minor and C, and when he died at age thirty-six of malnutrition and overwork, he stated "I have finished before I could enjoy my talent" (p. 451).
Beethoven
Beethoven (1770-1827) recreated instrumental music by elaborating Haydn and Mozart's classical forms for wider audiences. Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in F Major was considered the prototype of program music, and he is widely praised for his work with instrumental music and possibilities in the orchestra, as well as for uniting the music of instruments and the music of words to create new forms.
Monet
Monet (1840-1926) was encouraged to preserve his first impression, and he developed into a bold Impressionist. His paintings had no subject and were only the momentary impression on his unique self; "his achievement was not in the durable but in the elusive moment" (p. 524).
Benjamin Franklin
The second classic biography, "Autobiography" by Benjamin Franklin is explored in Section 59: The Arts of Seeming Truthful: Autobiography, and this allowed him to create a new and modern form of literature: the success saga, a chronicle for the self-made man. Though "Autobiography" is incoherent and incomplete, it is often called the first American addition to world literature.
James Boswell
James Boswell, the first biographer, wrote about Dr. Samuel Johnson. "Life of Johnson" (1787) is meant to exhibit Johnson more completely than any other person had yet been preserved, and this biography announced "a modern literary creation- the individual life becoming the raw material of art" (p. 598).
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) found his place among the great creators of Western literature for giving enduring form to the spirit of the Medieval legend of Dr. Faustus in "Faust" which he wrote off and on from 1770 until his death in 1832. He transformed Dr. Faust into a hero on a quest for fulfillment as a metaphor for the "infinitely aspiring always dissatisfied modern self" (p. 605).
William Wordsworth
"Lyrical Ballads" (1801) by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) announced a revolution in poetry by declaring independence from the stilted conventions of poetic language by focusing on making a new expressive view of poetry. Wordsworth's best poetry was works of remembrance, but his focus on himself was not enough to sustain an epic.
T. S. Eliot
A century after Wordsworth, an anti-Romantic revolution came into English literature with T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) and his manifesto, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1917). Eliot and his collaborator, Ezra Pound (1888-1972) declared themselves the enemy of the Egotistical Self as they believed poetry was about continual self-sacrifice and extinction of personality, not about the poet. Finding security in a banking job, Eliot wrote his best poems while employed at the bank, including the first modernist poem published in America, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915). "The Waste Land" (1922) aims to express incoherence, and Pound hailed it as justifying the movement of the modern experiment.
Herman Melville
Seizing upon the popularity of whaling in New England in the early nineteenth century, Herman Melville used it as the subject of his great American epic, reflecting on the paradoxes of good and evil. Though it lacks the development and conflict of characters necessary for a novel, "Moby Dick" presents personalities described as caricatures, and Ahab's hunt for the whale represents the mystery of the self; for twentieth century readers, the novel became one of the most popular vehicles for the modern self.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) became the idol of Western literature despite his novels laying siege to Western values. He saw the materialism of Western science and mathematics as a denial of freedom. Drawing on his experience in prison, Dostoyevsky wrote "Crime and Punishment" (1866) about the story of a struggling soul, while "The Brothers Karamzov" (1879) accumulated the thoughts and impressions of his life. His "fanatic Slavomania reminded the West that there might be dimensions of life not seen in the clear stream of consciousness or in the murky depths of the unconscious" (p. 671).
Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust (1871-1922) used time as the subject of his eight volumes created as a "new way of conquering time's transience and evanescence" (p. 684). The four volumes of "Remembrance of Things Past" is divided into seven sections focused on the following seven themes: childhood, awakening loves for people and the arts, high society, homosexual and heterosexual love, ways of being possessed, deprivation, and the cycle of recapturing life through memory. Proust believed the artist could capture and make himself immortal, though the disintegration of the self was continuous death. His originality was his way of conquering time by making it the raw material of his novel and "making it his art to re-create life in time rather than in space" (p. 696).
James Joyce
James Joyce (1882-1941) explored other outreaching possibilities of the self and "encompassed time in autobiography, creating new ways to make the self universal" (p. 699). He brought together the novel and biography as never before in "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1916) and "Ulysses" (1922) by expanding his ideas from childhood and adolescent trials into a personal epic. By making art follow nature and focusing on the act of creation in the arts, Joyce recreated the mystery of art and the universe, making "the language of the self an invitation to rediscover and delight in the mystery" (p. 714).
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) shared her wonder at the mystery of the feminine self by experimenting with the self in her writings which were frequently about female authors. Making the novel her medium for exploration, she "wrote of the world within her, which she imagined also to be within others" ]]
October 21, 2022
Extremely well researched accounting of the written word, music, and painting, sculpture, dance and film, Boorstin attains a massive history of creators. Easily read, and very educational, it staggers ones imagination with the sheer scope of it's subject. Although the author does only give a slight nod to the female creators, writing this about early 20th-century female writers;
"Women had not the raw materials in their own lives for chronicles of worldly conflict and adventure, of struggles for wealth and power. The few who enriched English literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when women were becoming an increasing part of the reading public, had the talent to embroider their limited experience." Yikes. So, basically women never experienced any part of the world other than to "embroider their experiences ": probably with needle and thread. Ugh.
Please don't get me wrong, I liked the book, and respect the author who had garnered impressive awards such as the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer. It was just a bit to sexist for my tastes.
"Women had not the raw materials in their own lives for chronicles of worldly conflict and adventure, of struggles for wealth and power. The few who enriched English literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when women were becoming an increasing part of the reading public, had the talent to embroider their limited experience." Yikes. So, basically women never experienced any part of the world other than to "embroider their experiences ": probably with needle and thread. Ugh.
Please don't get me wrong, I liked the book, and respect the author who had garnered impressive awards such as the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer. It was just a bit to sexist for my tastes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 24, 2018
"A taster menu of creators of all kinds of ideas"
Religion architecture, painting, literature and music are all mentioned given as a morsel of possible exploration in a sea of possible subjects, some historical influences and religious influences are explored as to why cultures creations differ and some historical events influences are explained.
A great way to open up one's appetite for knowledge just do not expect it to be encyclopedic, this is a fun exploration of history and some of the influential stories of new ideas.
Religion architecture, painting, literature and music are all mentioned given as a morsel of possible exploration in a sea of possible subjects, some historical influences and religious influences are explored as to why cultures creations differ and some historical events influences are explained.
A great way to open up one's appetite for knowledge just do not expect it to be encyclopedic, this is a fun exploration of history and some of the influential stories of new ideas.
January 14, 2021
This second book in Boorstin's knowledge trilogy covers the arts, more or less. Its focus is, like the previous volume, is a "view from the literate West".
It begins with the creation myth itself, then proceeds through sculpture, architecture, painting, dance, music, drama, poetry and prose, and, finally (in a short epilogue), film. Had I attempted to read this book when it was first published, I think I'd have been quite frustrated. I found myself going to the internet to find pictures of the various works discussed. This was the case more for the first parts of the book than the last, as a series of photos can give a sense of a building or painting but is much less useful when it comes to the works of Proust or Cervantes.
Like the Discoverers, this book is a nice jumping-off point for further investigation. And, like that earlier volume, this one is made up, essentially, of a bunch of short stories: a biography of some Creator (William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Richard Wagner, etc), a description of their work, and why their work was significant.
Given the breadth of the subject, and the number of "artistic" disciplines covered, I think Boorstin did a great job. It has been said (originally by Martin Mull, probably) that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." He's not trying so much to describe the music (or painting, etc) itself, but what made this music (or sculpture, etc) different from what came before; what made it important.
Of course, it's impossible for a book like this to meet the expectations of all readers. Myself, I was surprised that, given the amount of space devoted to music, jazz is barely mentioned (it has but one entry in the index). And the art of film gets only nine pages in an epilogue.
The reference notes are not what I'm used to (i.e. specific source information) but much more general. There is no separate bibliography and no pictures.
It begins with the creation myth itself, then proceeds through sculpture, architecture, painting, dance, music, drama, poetry and prose, and, finally (in a short epilogue), film. Had I attempted to read this book when it was first published, I think I'd have been quite frustrated. I found myself going to the internet to find pictures of the various works discussed. This was the case more for the first parts of the book than the last, as a series of photos can give a sense of a building or painting but is much less useful when it comes to the works of Proust or Cervantes.
Like the Discoverers, this book is a nice jumping-off point for further investigation. And, like that earlier volume, this one is made up, essentially, of a bunch of short stories: a biography of some Creator (William Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Richard Wagner, etc), a description of their work, and why their work was significant.
Given the breadth of the subject, and the number of "artistic" disciplines covered, I think Boorstin did a great job. It has been said (originally by Martin Mull, probably) that "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." He's not trying so much to describe the music (or painting, etc) itself, but what made this music (or sculpture, etc) different from what came before; what made it important.
Of course, it's impossible for a book like this to meet the expectations of all readers. Myself, I was surprised that, given the amount of space devoted to music, jazz is barely mentioned (it has but one entry in the index). And the art of film gets only nine pages in an epilogue.
The reference notes are not what I'm used to (i.e. specific source information) but much more general. There is no separate bibliography and no pictures.
March 2, 2017
This book is what I deem the ideal combination of useful and fun facts. It is interdisciplinary and, what I perhaps love most about it, non-linear. By "non-linear" I mean that, even though each chapter has a specific theme, Boorstin does not stick too closely to that theme. He enriches the text with interesting pieces of information that complement the main theme and make the chapter more dynamic. These "recesses" give the reader additional perspectives, background information or just fun facts and great comparisons that enlarge their knowledge.
All the chapters are "bite-sized" (approximately 10-15 pages), which adds to the dynamic feeling of the book and are really well-organized.
I really love Boorstin's writing style as well; it's a combination of non-fiction and fiction. He seems to be able to tell a great story through biographies and historical recaps while including so many important facts which the reader ends up remembering through association or precisely because of this elegant story lines in which they are embedded.
Boorstin has been criticized for being "outdated" (this book was written in 1992 after all), but the edition I read was nicely updated via endnotes. So for all of you who are concerned about this, please don't let it stop you from reading the book. It's really worth it!
All the chapters are "bite-sized" (approximately 10-15 pages), which adds to the dynamic feeling of the book and are really well-organized.
I really love Boorstin's writing style as well; it's a combination of non-fiction and fiction. He seems to be able to tell a great story through biographies and historical recaps while including so many important facts which the reader ends up remembering through association or precisely because of this elegant story lines in which they are embedded.
Boorstin has been criticized for being "outdated" (this book was written in 1992 after all), but the edition I read was nicely updated via endnotes. So for all of you who are concerned about this, please don't let it stop you from reading the book. It's really worth it!
September 20, 2017
The author has a great fund of knowledge and many of the short biographies were fascinating: Dickens, Melville, Eliot. Coverage of the Mediaeval period was scant, with 90% of the figures post 20th century. The author's love affair with progressives was annoying and the book is terribly skewed toward a leftist, liberal view of history. I actually did not finish the last 100 pages. An entirely different book could have been written by another author with a different worldview: I much prefer Jacques Barzun or Christopher Dawson.
January 19, 2015
Citanje ove knjige, obogatice vas osim znanjem i svescu da i vi mozete biti pojedinac koji ulepsava ovaj svet licnim postignucima i zeljama da oplemeni covecanstvo. Svako ima svoju sansu da stvori jos lepsi svet za sebe i druge.
Sa njenih stranica provejava duh pojedinaca koji su istinski verovali u ono sto stvaraju, koji su utkali delove sebe u beskajne niti covecanstva. Njihove licne spoznaje, postale su deo znanja svih nas. Hvala im na tome.
Sa njenih stranica provejava duh pojedinaca koji su istinski verovali u ono sto stvaraju, koji su utkali delove sebe u beskajne niti covecanstva. Njihove licne spoznaje, postale su deo znanja svih nas. Hvala im na tome.
March 26, 2010
Ok, so far, what I have learned from reading this book is make certain you get the illustrated version. Otherwise you will do what I did and run down your phone battery googling everything.
I can't believe my library has an edition without illustrations.
It is a book about great art for heaven's sake!!
I can't believe my library has an edition without illustrations.
It is a book about great art for heaven's sake!!
September 5, 2013
A very ambitious yet fascinating exploration of art history. Boorstin doesn't stop at the visual arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, etc); he also covers literature, music, and dance. Although I wished for illustrations in a few places where specific artworks were discussed, the sheer deluge of wonderfully meticulous story-telling made up for it.
April 22, 2008
One can only conclude from reading this book that Daniel Boorstin was a genius. The book contains an amazing survey of world history. It's a behemoth of a book and I can no longer believe I read the whole thing, which means I need to reread it.
October 31, 2012
A mighty tome to be read and savored. It is packed full of information and beautifully written.
July 28, 2014
A great history of the arts, too place along Boorstin's other great historical book (The Discoverers).
June 10, 2020
This was a long, and yet amazing, tour of all the arts from Classical times to almost present day. Daniel Boorstin does a fabulous job of explaining and describing different types of art from different cultures.
He starts with the various stories of creation, from Hinduism, Confucianism, Greek and Roman mythology, to the story of Moses and Christianity. He then discusses different types and styles of architecture, sculpture and artistry, the written word in the form of poems and essays and novels, and he ends with art and literature in the early 20th Century. With each topic, he states perspectives and insights that I never knew or had ever heard of before reading this book.
The works he cites are works that many of us are familiar with. But one of my issues with this long book is that I wish there were illustrations or pictures of the works he is citing or the individuals he is writing about. Although by not having pictures, I ended up Googling a lot of what he was referencing, especially art and architectural works.
My other issue is that he focused primarily on Western art and architecture. He does briefly describe how Japanese architecture was different in that it was wood based whereas Western architecture was more stone based. But when he describes the great classical painters, writers and other artists, he focuses solely on Western individuals. I would have liked to know what was going on in India, Japan, China nd South America, while Shakespeare was writing his plays or Kafka was writing his novels.
Despite my issues, this was still an entertaining read, as well as being educational.
He starts with the various stories of creation, from Hinduism, Confucianism, Greek and Roman mythology, to the story of Moses and Christianity. He then discusses different types and styles of architecture, sculpture and artistry, the written word in the form of poems and essays and novels, and he ends with art and literature in the early 20th Century. With each topic, he states perspectives and insights that I never knew or had ever heard of before reading this book.
The works he cites are works that many of us are familiar with. But one of my issues with this long book is that I wish there were illustrations or pictures of the works he is citing or the individuals he is writing about. Although by not having pictures, I ended up Googling a lot of what he was referencing, especially art and architectural works.
My other issue is that he focused primarily on Western art and architecture. He does briefly describe how Japanese architecture was different in that it was wood based whereas Western architecture was more stone based. But when he describes the great classical painters, writers and other artists, he focuses solely on Western individuals. I would have liked to know what was going on in India, Japan, China nd South America, while Shakespeare was writing his plays or Kafka was writing his novels.
Despite my issues, this was still an entertaining read, as well as being educational.
December 8, 2024
The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination ist ein weiteres bedeutendes Buch von Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-2004), das 1992 als Teil seiner Trilogie zur kulturellen Geschichte erschien. Während The Discoverers den menschlichen Wissensdurst und die Entdeckungen in der Geschichte beleuchtet, richtet The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination seinen Fokus auf die schöpferische Kraft und das künstlerische Genie, das für viele Kulturen der Welt prägend ist.
Obwohl Daniel J. Boorstin in The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination einen beeindruckenden Bogen über mehrere Jahrtausende spannt und faszinierende Einblicke in die Denkweisen und religiösen Anschauungen von Kulturen wie China und Indien bietet, bleibt Afrika in seinem Buch weitgehend unbeachtet. Abgesehen von Ägypten, das als wichtiger kultureller Einfluss auf die Entwicklung des westlichen Denkens und als Heimat der Bibliothek von Alexandria – der ersten umfassenden Sammlung des literarischen Erbes des Westens – hervorgehoben wird, tritt der afrikanische Kontinent meist nur als Kulisse für europäische Unternehmungen auf. Die Suche nach einem Seeweg nach Indien führte zur Erkundung der afrikanischen Küste und zur Gründung von Handelsposten, während Albert Schweitzer, ein Verehrer Bachs, Afrika im 20. Jahrhundert zum Schauplatz humanitärer und kultureller Aktivitäten machte. Doch darüber hinaus bleibt Boorstins Blick eurozentrisch. Die schöpferischen Leistungen und kulturellen Errungenschaften afrikanischer Gesellschaften finden kaum Beachtung, wodurch das Buch einen blinden Fleck behält, der das universelle Verständnis von Kreativität einschränkt.
Obwohl Daniel J. Boorstin in The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination einen beeindruckenden Bogen über mehrere Jahrtausende spannt und faszinierende Einblicke in die Denkweisen und religiösen Anschauungen von Kulturen wie China und Indien bietet, bleibt Afrika in seinem Buch weitgehend unbeachtet. Abgesehen von Ägypten, das als wichtiger kultureller Einfluss auf die Entwicklung des westlichen Denkens und als Heimat der Bibliothek von Alexandria – der ersten umfassenden Sammlung des literarischen Erbes des Westens – hervorgehoben wird, tritt der afrikanische Kontinent meist nur als Kulisse für europäische Unternehmungen auf. Die Suche nach einem Seeweg nach Indien führte zur Erkundung der afrikanischen Küste und zur Gründung von Handelsposten, während Albert Schweitzer, ein Verehrer Bachs, Afrika im 20. Jahrhundert zum Schauplatz humanitärer und kultureller Aktivitäten machte. Doch darüber hinaus bleibt Boorstins Blick eurozentrisch. Die schöpferischen Leistungen und kulturellen Errungenschaften afrikanischer Gesellschaften finden kaum Beachtung, wodurch das Buch einen blinden Fleck behält, der das universelle Verständnis von Kreativität einschränkt.
April 2, 2023
Este es un gran libro definitivamente, pero quiero resaltar la versión castellana, ya que lo leí paralelamente en español y en Inglés ( The Creators, Vintage books, Random House 1993). La edición de editorial Crítica, Barcelona 1995, es mucho más rica, la traducción castellana de Juan Faci y Francesca Carmona es ampliamente maravillosa, es un deleite superior. Hace que la edición norteamericana se sienta pobre en su texto, quiero decir es mucho más técnico en inglés, pero en castellano es refinado, elegantemente claro, incluso puedo decir brillante.
Aplauso a los traductores.
Este libro se vendió en EUA como “Bestseller”, lo cual a mi gusto personal no requiere de esas etiquetas comerciales, incluso puede llegar a confundir a un público especializado en la historia del arte.
Qué bueno que la edición castellana no lo estereotipa de ese modo.
Un libro de más de 700 páginas impone, pero vale mucho la pena hacer el esfuerzo, que ni se siente , al contrario al terminarlo, vas querer inmediatamente conseguir “Los descubridores” y “Los pensadores” del mismo autor.
Un libro para ampliar gratamente tus horizontes sobre cultura universal, y no solo cultura antigua sino también de nuestros tiempos. Un libro que te deja positivamente reflexionando sobre la humanidad y sus obras.
Aplauso a los traductores.
Este libro se vendió en EUA como “Bestseller”, lo cual a mi gusto personal no requiere de esas etiquetas comerciales, incluso puede llegar a confundir a un público especializado en la historia del arte.
Qué bueno que la edición castellana no lo estereotipa de ese modo.
Un libro de más de 700 páginas impone, pero vale mucho la pena hacer el esfuerzo, que ni se siente , al contrario al terminarlo, vas querer inmediatamente conseguir “Los descubridores” y “Los pensadores” del mismo autor.
Un libro para ampliar gratamente tus horizontes sobre cultura universal, y no solo cultura antigua sino también de nuestros tiempos. Un libro que te deja positivamente reflexionando sobre la humanidad y sus obras.
April 26, 2025
Daniel J. Boorstin's The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination is 6/5 read.
An incredible and sweeping survey of human creativity across millennia. Spanning from the ancient myths of Homer to the modernist innovations of Joyce and Picasso, Boorstin crafts a panoramic narrative that celebrates the individuals who have shaped Western culture through art, literature, music, and architecture.
What sets this work apart is Boorstin's encyclopedic scholarship and lucid writing. It's not mere catalog achievements but rather weaving them into a cohesive grand story of civilization's most creative endeavors. Each chapter offers insights into how creators, from Dante to Michelangelo, expanded the boundaries of human expression.
While the book's focus is predominantly on Western civilization, Boorstin does make attempts to include perspectives from other cultures, though those sections, for understandable, reasons might feel a bit like an afterthought. Having said that he still does justice to the theme of "Heroes of Imagination" by including chapters on Buddhism, Tao, Japanese art and the Upanishads making a good case for being non-eurocentric.
The Creators is not just a history book; it's a celebration of the human spirit's capacity to imagine, create, and inspire. It's a compelling read for those eager to explore the cultural milestones that have defined our world.
An incredible and sweeping survey of human creativity across millennia. Spanning from the ancient myths of Homer to the modernist innovations of Joyce and Picasso, Boorstin crafts a panoramic narrative that celebrates the individuals who have shaped Western culture through art, literature, music, and architecture.
What sets this work apart is Boorstin's encyclopedic scholarship and lucid writing. It's not mere catalog achievements but rather weaving them into a cohesive grand story of civilization's most creative endeavors. Each chapter offers insights into how creators, from Dante to Michelangelo, expanded the boundaries of human expression.
While the book's focus is predominantly on Western civilization, Boorstin does make attempts to include perspectives from other cultures, though those sections, for understandable, reasons might feel a bit like an afterthought. Having said that he still does justice to the theme of "Heroes of Imagination" by including chapters on Buddhism, Tao, Japanese art and the Upanishads making a good case for being non-eurocentric.
The Creators is not just a history book; it's a celebration of the human spirit's capacity to imagine, create, and inspire. It's a compelling read for those eager to explore the cultural milestones that have defined our world.
October 14, 2020
This book has been on my bookshelf for 25 years, just waiting for a time when I could spend time with it. Having just finished a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, I thought this would be a good followup. I found this book to be a more difficult read. The author's outline begins with an analysis of the role of God in creating, moving to Man as a creator in the image of God the Creator, and winding up with Man's role in creating for the self. It was very comprehensive and explored the development of all of the creative arts from antiquities to the mid twentieth century, selecting representative "artists" to develop the creation of the period. The biographies were every entertaining and the information presented was enlightening, not only for people and periods that I was already familiar with, but also for the development of an art form through time. Although it took a long time to finally finish this book, I finish feeling much more enlightened about the development of artistic vision and the actual process of creating as embodied in the selected artists. Boorstin's companion work The Discoverers will need to wait some more time until I am of the frame of mind to follow his thesis and development of scientific and mathematical thought.
June 11, 2023
Well, this sets the record for the longest I've owned a book before finishing it. I must've gotten my copy in the late '90s, and 25ish years later it's been read. Mind you, it wasn't lack of interest that kept me from tackling this companion tome to Boorstin's also excellent The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and HimselfThe Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself - just merely that when I moved around the world two decades ago, this was one of the casualties left behind in a box in the childhood home basement. A few years ago, both books finally traveled with me after a trip home, and at last I've been able to tackle these tremendously informative and interesting snapshots of the greatest creators in the history of the West.
June 16, 2020
Boorstin takes a look at history and human consciousness through different mediums of artistic expression such as storytelling, physical arts, music, and theater. While this is an extremely helpful resource, as his attempt at fitting as much information as possible about the entirety of human experience in only about 740 pages is a great one, I do have some issues with the way that Boorstin talks about some of his findings. His approach to talking about the beliefs of different cultures in the very first chapters of the book made me slightly uncomfortable, as did what very little he wrote about women. This is a fantastic text to use for research or for scratching the surface of the way we have expressed ourselves throughout time, but it should not be the only text you use for that information. Some of what Boorstin describes should be taken with a grain of salt, as his personal biases sometimes shine through.
March 16, 2025
Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Creators: A History of Heroes of The Imagination is a seminal accomplishment. The author reviewed the lives of hundreds of famous people who have made significant contributions in the arts. He looked at the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Indian sub-continent, the Middle East; ancient, medieval, modern Europe, and America.
The arts covered included – drama, dance, literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and film. Aspects of these creations dealt in some way with religious themes. The lives portrayed were impacted by poor health, broken marriages, and problematic sexual relationships.
In cases, outstanding artists struggled, were bankrupt, before some were able to live comfortably. Despite these difficulties, the arts evolved in fascinating ways. Buildings, structures of all sorts, dance, literature, painting, and sculpture blossomed; shaping, and impacting developments worldwide.
The arts covered included – drama, dance, literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, and film. Aspects of these creations dealt in some way with religious themes. The lives portrayed were impacted by poor health, broken marriages, and problematic sexual relationships.
In cases, outstanding artists struggled, were bankrupt, before some were able to live comfortably. Despite these difficulties, the arts evolved in fascinating ways. Buildings, structures of all sorts, dance, literature, painting, and sculpture blossomed; shaping, and impacting developments worldwide.
July 8, 2021
I've realized that I'm never going to finish this book. This is not because of the quality of the research or the prose; instead it is just that I prefer a survey of technology history (See Boorstin's The Discoverers, which was quite good) over a survey of cultural history.
This book also has a failing specific to its subject: there are very few pictures or illustrations of concepts or of specific works. So, when I read about Japanese architecture vs Western architecture, I had to look for pictures on Wikipedia to understand what Boorstin was trying to convey through words about horizontal vs vertical design. This happens throughout the book, and is probably the reason it is so lengthy. After all, as they say: "A picture is worth a thousand words."
This book also has a failing specific to its subject: there are very few pictures or illustrations of concepts or of specific works. So, when I read about Japanese architecture vs Western architecture, I had to look for pictures on Wikipedia to understand what Boorstin was trying to convey through words about horizontal vs vertical design. This happens throughout the book, and is probably the reason it is so lengthy. After all, as they say: "A picture is worth a thousand words."
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