"The decisive event in the history of modern aesthetics was Kant's Critique of Judgement. The seminal concepts of this work include the theory of the creative imagination, the 'purposiveness without purpose' of works of art, and the disinterestedness and subjective universality of judgements of taste. These concepts have remained basic in the aesthetic tradition from Kant's day to the present. The Quest for Imagination presents essays on several of the most important twentieth-century representatives of that tradition: George Santayana, Wallace Stevens, (...) Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritian, Jean-Paul Sartre, Northrop Frye, Edmund Husserl, Stephane Mallarme, Georges Poulet, and Gaston Bachelard. The essays introduce some of the finest thought on literature that this century has produced. Coming at a time when literature is frequently debased to propaganda and political cliche, they affirm the vitality of the aesthetic approach and the importance of the profession of letters in modern life." -- Dust jacket. (shrink)