The Power of Distraction
Diversion and Reverie from Montaigne to Proust
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Product details:
- Publisher Bloomsbury Academic
- Date of Publication 24 April 2025
- Number of Volumes Paperback
- ISBN 9781350342989
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages pages
- Size 214x134x14 mm
- Weight 260 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 3 bw illus 725
Categories
Long description:
From Pascal to contemporary anxieties about attention, we have constantly been urged to avoid distraction if we want to live and work better. But Alessandra Aloisi argues that we are missing the point.Drawing on a broad range ofEuropean philosophy and literature, this book considers distraction not as an expression of human imperfection, but as a creative, subversive, and aesthetic capability.
In contrast to the traditional accounts, from Saint Augustine to Robert Burton, which either associated distraction with sin or considered it as a symptom of melancholy, Aloisi argues that it is often precisely when we stop thinking about something that inspiration finds us. Why else are artists described as having their heads in the clouds? This book demonstrates the serendipity of distraction through close readings of cultural and visual sources ranging from the mathematician Poincar
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Divertissement
1. Montaigne and Pascal, or the Difference between Ethics and Morality
2. The Sublime Misanthropist
3. A Man Alone in a Room
4. Maine de Biran Criticizing (Voltaire Criticizing) Pascal
5. Assault on the Inner Citadel
6. Chasing a Hare
7. The Theory of Pleasure
Chapter 2: The Power of Flies
1. Augustine and Pascal
2. Serendipity
3. A Distracted Mathematician
4. Distraction and Trains of Thought
5. What is Essential is (In)visible to the Eye
6. Involuntary Memory
7. The Spider and the Connoisseur
8. 'The Entire History of You'
Chapter 3: R?verie
1. Dreams, Reveries, and Fantasies
2. Reveries and Childhood
3. Journey, Movement, and Solitude
4. Distraction and Automatism
5. The System of the Soul and the Beast, or the Dangers of Distraction
6. Distraction and Somnambulism
7. Reveries and the History of Madness
8. Distraction and Common Sense
9. Idleness and Laziness
Conclusion: Distraction and Laughter
Bibliography
Index
