The Philosophy of Enchantment: Studies in Folktale, Cultural Criticism, and Anthropology

This is the long-awaited publication of a set of writings by the British philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R. G. Collingwood on critical, anthropological, and cultural themes only hinted at in his previously available work. At the centre of the book are six chapters of a study of folktale and magic, composed by Collingwood in the mid-1930s and intended for development into a book. Here Collingwood applies the principles of his philosophy of history to problems in the long-term evolution of human society and culture. This is preceded, in Part I, by a range of contextualizing material on such topics as the relations between music and poetry, the nature of language, the value of Jane Austen's novels, the philosophy of art, and the relations between aesthetic theory and artistic practice. Part III of the volume consists of two essays, one on the relationship between art and mechanized civilization, and the second, written in 1931, on the collapse of human values and civilization leading up to the catastrophe of armed conflict. These offer a devastating analysis of the consequences that attend the desertion of liberal principles, indeed of all politics as such, in the ultimate self-annihilation of military conquest.The volume opens with three substantial introductory essays by the editors, authorities in the fields of critical and literary history, social and cultural anthropology, and the philosophy of history and the history of ideas; they provide their explanatory and contextual notes to guide the reader through the texts. The Philosophy of Enchantment brings hitherto unrecognized areas of Collingwood's achievement to light, and demonstrates the broad range of Collingwood's intellectual engagements, their integration, and their relevance to current areas of debate in the fields of philosophy, cultural studies, social and literary history, and anthropology.

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION Philip Smallwood: The Re-Enactment of Self: Perspectives from Literature, Criticism, and Culture Wendy James: A Fieldworker's Philosopher: Perspectives from Anthropology David Boucher: In Defence of Collingwood: Perspectives from Philosophy and the History of Ideas Part I: Art and Culture 1: Words and Tune 2: Observations on Language 3: Jane Austen (1921) 4: Jane Austen (?1934) 5: The Philosophy of Art 6: Aesthetic Theory and Artistic Practice Part II: Tales of Enchantment 7: Fairy Tales 8: Three Methods of Approach: Philological, Functional, Psychological 9: The Historical Method 10: Magic 11: Excavating Cinderella and King Lear 12: The Authorship of Fairy-Tales Addenda to the Folktale Manuscript Part III: The Modern Unease 13: Art and the Machine 14: Man Goes Mad

Review :
`Review from previous edition The appearance in print in a scholarly and scrupulously edited form of Collingwood's folktale manuscript is very much to be welcomed as something of an event in Collingwood studies. The editors have done a superb job in presenting the folktale manuscript in a highly accessible form and in linking it with a number of other previously unpublished manuscripts and papers on broadly connected themes.' Peter Johnson, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews