Experience

A History
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-0-520-43438-7
Verlag: University of California

Buch, Englisch, 272 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm

A lyrical, provocative journey into the art, memory, and meaning of experience.What does it mean to have an experience? When did we begin to believe we could “have" one at all? In Experience: A History, Lawrence Kramer traces the cultural birth of experience as a singular, life-defining event. Moving lyrically between criticism and memoir, he guides readers from Petrarch and Nietzsche to Virginia Woolf and Anne Carson; from Haydn’s luminous Creation to Billie Holiday's searing “Strange Fruit.” Along the way we encounter Niagara Falls and the Galápagos, Parisian department stores and Manhattan nightclubs, and luminaries such as Franz Schubert, Henry and William James, and Benjamin Britten.As early as the fourteenth century and accelerating after the eighteenth, records of concentrated, unforgettable moments begin to proliferate—until the possibility of having an experience becomes a demand for one. Experience turns into something to seek, curate, even consume. Yet its power lies in its particulars: the convergence of history, art, memory, and self. At once personal and tender, challenging and vulnerable, Experience fuses philosophical argument with intimate recollection. The result is both a sweeping intellectual history and a deeply human reckoning with the experiences that shape and unsettle modern life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kramer, Lawrence

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Musikwissenschaft Musikwissenschaft Allgemein Musiktheorie, Musikästhetik, Kompositionslehre

Inhaltsverzeichnis

CONTENTSPrefaceIntroduction: The Concept of ExperienceFraming Experience: From Androids to ScreensExperience, Enchantment, and the OrdinaryExperience, Immanence, and TranscendenceRecognizing an ExperiencePossibility and PrivilegeLanguage and the Claiming of ExperienceI. Having an Experience: From Petrarch to Billie HolidayAnticipations I: Michel de MontaigneAnticipations II: Francis PetrarchRalph Waldo EmersonHenry David ThoreauHenry JamesStrange Fruit: Henry James, Robert Hayden, Billie HolidayExperience and the Penitentiary: Charles Dickens and Henry JamesExperience, Commerce, and Wonder: Dickens and James at Niagara FallsNiagara Falls, Continued: Walt Whitman and Margaret FullerAn Experience or Not? SourcesAn Experience or Not? Standards I: The FrameAn Experience or Not? Standards II: The UnforetoldPhantasmagoriaMoments of Being: Virginia WoolfII. The Varieties of Aesthetic Experience: From Schubert to William JamesAspect ChangeThe Aesthetics of ThinkingMusic and Modern ExperienceThe Aesthetic, Entertainment, and AnarchyBeautyTwo Winter Journeys: Schubert and ThoreauAnother Wanderer: Yee of ToishanBeauty Revisited: The Return of the AestheticLove, Enlightenment, and the Rise of Ordinary LifeA Turning Point: Franz Joseph Haydn’s The CreationAesthetic Understanding: The As-IfExperience, Chance, and Existential ModestyTrust, Reality, and Chance: From Signification to ExperienceThe Stream of Consciousness: William James and Virginia WoolfExperience and MortalityThe Flux of Experience and Modern LifeSounding Experience: Niagara Falls Revisited (Joyce Carol Oates)Sounding Experience: Walk, Water, Pilgrimage (Anne Carson)Sounding Experience: Tropical Études (Claude Lévi-Strauss)Sounding Experience: A Prelude (Frédéric Chopin)Preserving the Singular: Mourning, Memory, ElegyIII. Experience Regained: Two Walks by the River of TimeDurable ExperienceFirst Encounters: Prison, River, CityA Company of WalkersSome Personal HistoryItinerariesIn the DoorwayHenry James and MeWordsworth, Too (The Way Home)Another WalkA PostscriptNotesIndex

Über Autor(innen)

Lawrence Kramer is Distinguished Professor of English and Music at Fordham University. He is the author of sixteen previous books, including The Thought of Music, The Hum of the World, Experiencing Sound, and Music and the Forms of Life. He is also an award-winning composer whose works have been performed throughout the United States and Europe.