Colours of the Mind

Angus Fletcher, who is considered to be one of the finest theorists of the arts, follows in the tradition of I.A. Richards, Erich Auerbach and Northrop Frye. This book aims to open another field of study: how thought - the act, the experience of thinking - is represented in literature. Recognizing that the field of formal philosophy is only one demonstration of the uses of thought, Fletcher looks for the ways other languages (and their framing forms) serve the purpose of certain thinking activities. What kinds of thinking accompany the writing of history? How does the gnomic sentence manage to represent some point of belief? The insights Fletcher achieves suggest an anatomy of poetic and fictional strategies for representing thought - the hazards, the complications, the sufferings, the romance of thought. The reader samples his vision of Milton's Satan, the originial Thinker, leaving the pain of thinking as his legacy for mankind; Marvell's mysteriously haunting "green thought in a green shade"; Old Testament and Herodotus; Vico and Coleridge; Crane, Calvino and Stevens. Fletcher ranges over literature, poetry, music, and film, never losing sight of his central line of inquiry.
He includes comments on the essential role of unclear, vague, and even irrational thinking, to suggest that ideas often come alive as thoughts only in a process of considerable distress. In the end he gives us literature - not the content of thought, but its form, its shape, the fugitive colours taken on by the mind as is represented in art.