The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes is a seminal work that explores the revolutionary changes in art and design during the 20th century. It covers movements from Cubism to Pop Art, discussing artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Warhol, and examines the cultural and historical contexts that shaped modern art. The book is both a historical account and a critical analysis, offering a vivid picture of the evolving landscape of modern art.
Syntactic Structures, published in 1957, is a seminal work by Noam Chomsky that transformed the field of linguistics. It introduces the concept of transformational grammar, arguing that language is governed by deep structures transformed into surface structures. Chomsky also proposed the innateness hypothesis, suggesting that humans are born with a universal grammar. This book laid the foundation for generative grammar and had a profound impact on linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.
In 'Morphology of the Folktale', Vladimir Propp presents a seminal analysis of Russian folk tales by identifying 31 basic narrative functions that occur in a specific order. This work, first published in Russian in 1928, has significantly influenced folklore studies and narrative theory across various media forms.
Is genuine originality a realistic goal for artists?
From fashion to fantasy, entertainment to enterprise, we seek the 'new' as the means to originality, change, and creativity. And for the most part, we imagine the new is always identifiable as a radical break from the past. But the nature of the new is more elusive and unknown than it first appears. Is the new an illusion, and the search for originality a mistake? Should creative endeavour be focussed on other goals, such as the timeless, the provocative, and the beautiful? Or is the new an essential part of life, creativity and action, without which we would have mere passive re-orderings of the known?
Martin Puchner is a literary critic and philosopher. He is the Byron and Anita Wien Chair of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Claire Hynes is Associate Professor in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, and an author of fiction and creative non-fiction. Stanley Fish is a literary critic, legal scholar, and public intellectual. Renowned for his role in developing reader-response theory in literary studies, Fish has written on a wide range of topics including the poetry of John Milton, the distinction between free speech and academic freedom, and the doctrine of liberalism.
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Philosophy For Our Times 
